
PPLETONS H' 
READING B 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

diap. Copyright No 

ShelfJL4.2> 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




Interviewing the birds, 



APPLE TONS' HOME READING BOOKS 



NEWS FROM THE 
BIRDS 



BY 



LEANDER S. KEYSER 




NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1898 



•20 



Copyright, 1898, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



JUL 2 7 1898 



2* of 



TWO Co CEIVED- 



2nd COPY, 
1898, 



INTEODUCTION TO THE HOME EEADING 
BOOK SEEIES BY THE EDITOE. 



The new education takes two important direc* 
tions — one of these is toward original observation, 
requiring the pupil to test and verify what is taught 
him at school by his own experiments. The infor- 
mation that he learns from books or hears from his 
teacher's lips must be assimilated by incorporating it 
with his own experience. 

The other direction pointed out by the new edu- 
cation is systematic home reading. It forms a part of 
school extension of all kinds. The so-called " Univer- 
sity Extension " that originated at Cambridge and Ox- 
ford has as its chief feature the aid of home reading by 
lectures and round-table discussions, led or conducted 
by experts who also lay out the course of reading. 
The Chautauquan movement in this country prescribes 
a series of excellent books and furnishes for a goodly 
number of its readers annual courses of lectures. The 
teachers' reading circles that exist in many States pre- 
scribe the boo^ks to be read, and publish some analysis, 
commentary, or catechism to aid the members. 

Home reading, it seems, furnishes the essential 
basis of this great movement to extend education 



vi NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

beyond the school and to make self -culture a habit 
of life. 

Looking more carefully at the difference between 
the two directions of the new education we can see 
what each accomplishes. There is first an effort to 
train the original powers of the individual and make 
him self -active, quick at observation, and free in his 
thinking. Next, the new education endeavors, by the 
reading of books and the study of the wisdom of the 
race, to make the child or youth a participator in the 
results of experience of all mankind. 

These two movements may be made antagonistic 
by poor teaching. The book knowledge, containing as 
it does the precious lesson of human experience, may 
be so taught as to bring with it only dead rules of 
conduct, only dead scraps of information, and no 
stimulant to original thinking. Its contents may be 
memorized without being understood. On the other 
hand, the self -activity of the child may be stimulated 
at the expense of his social well-being — his originality 
may be cultivated at the expense of his rationality. 
If he is taught persistently to have his own way, to 
trust only his own senses, to cling to his own opinions 
heedless of the experience of his fellows, he is pre- 
paring for an unsuccessful, misanthropic career, and 
is likely enough to end his life in a madhouse. 

It is admitted that a too exclusive study of the 
knowledge found in books, the knowledge which is 
aggregated from the experience and thought of other 
people, may result in loading the mind of the pupil 
with material which he can not use to advantage. 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. yii 

Some minds are so full of lumber that there is no 
space left to set up a workshop. The necessity of 
uniting both of these directions of intellectual activity 
in the schools is therefore obvious, but we must not, 
in this place, fall into the error of supposing that it is 
the oral instruction in school and the personal influ- 
ence of the teacher alone that excites the pupil to ac- 
tivity. Book instruction is not always dry and theo- 
retical. The very persons who declaim against the 
book, and praise in such strong terms the self -activity 
of the pupil and original research, are mostly persons 
who have received their practical impulse from read- 
ing the writings of educational reformers. Yery few 
persons have received an impulse from personal con- 
tact with inspiring teachers compared with the num- 
ber that have been aroused by reading such books as 
Herbert Spencer's Treatise on Education, Rousseau's 
Emile, Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude, Francis 
W. Parker's Talks about Teaching, Gr. Stanley 
Hall's Pedagogical Seminary. Think in this connec- 
tion, too, of the impulse to observation in natural sci- 
ence produced by such books as those of Hugh Miller, 
Faraday, Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, and Darwin. 

The new scientific book is different from the old. 
The old style book of science gave dead results where 
the new one gives not only the results, but a minute 
account of the method employed in reaching those re- 
sults. An insight into the method employed in dis- 
covery trains the reader into a naturalist, an historian, 
a sociologist. The books of the writers above named 
have done more to stimulate original research on the 



yiii NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

part of their readers than all other influences com- 
bined. 

It is therefore much more a matter of importance 
to get the right kind of book than to get a hying 
teacher. The book which teaches results, and at the 
same time gives in an intelligible manner the steps of 
discovery and the methods employed, is a book 
which will stimulate the student to repeat the ex- 
periments described and get beyond them into fields 
of original research himself. Every one remem- 
bers the published lectures of Faraday on chemistry, 
which exercised a wide influence in changing the 
style of books on natural science, causing them to 
deal with method more than results, and thus train 
-the reader's power of conducting original research. 
Robinson Crusoe for nearly two hundred years has 
aroused the spirit of adventure and prompted young 
men to resort to the border lands of civilization. A 
library of home reading should contain books that in- 
cite to self-activity and arouse the spirit of inquiry. 
The books should treat of methods of discovery and 
evolution. All nature is unified by the discovery of 
the law of evolution. Each and every being in the 
world is now explained by the process of development 
to which it belongs. Every fact now throws light on 
all the others by illustrating the process of growth in 
which each has its end and aim. 

The Home Reading Books are to be classed as 
follows : 

First Division, Natural history, including popular 
scientific treatises on plants and animals, and also de- 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. i x 

scriptions of geographical localities. The branch of 
study in the district school course which corresponds 
to this is geography. Travels and sojourns in distant 
lands; special writings which treat of this or that 
animal or plant, or family of animals or plants ; any- 
thing that relates to organic nature or to meteorol- 
ogy, or descriptive astronomy may be placed in this 
class. 

Second Division. Whatever relates to physics or 
natural philosophy, to the statics or dynamics of air or 
water or light or electricity, or to the properties of 
matter ; whatever relates to chemistry, either organic 
or inorganic — books on these subjects belong to the 
class that relates to what is inorganic. Even the so- 
called organic chemistry relates to the analysis of 
organic bodies into their inorganic compounds. 

Third Division. History, biography, and ethnol- 
ogy. Books relating to the lives of individuals; to 
the social life of the nation ; to the collisions of na- 
tions in war, as well as to the aid that one nation 
gives to another through commerce in times of peace; 
books *on ethnology relating to the modes of life of 
savage or civilized peoples ; on primitive manners 
and customs — books on these subjects belong to the 
third class, relating particularly to the human will, 
not merely the individual will but the social will, 
the will of the tribe or nation ; and to this third 
class belong also books on ethics and " morals, and 
on forms of government and laws, and what is in- 
cluded under the term civics, or the duties of citi- 
zenship. 



x NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

Fourth Division. The fourth class of books in- 
cludes more especially literature and works that make 
known the beautiful in such departments as sculpture, 
painting, architecture and music. Literature and art 
show human nature in the form of feelings, emotions, 
and aspirations, and they show how these feelings 
lead over to deeds and to clear thoughts. This de- 
partment of books is perhaps more important than 
any other in our home reading, inasmuch as it teaches 
a knowledge of human nature and enables us to un- 
derstand the motives that lead our fellow-men to 
action. 

Plan for Use as Supplementary Reading. 

The first work of the child in the school is to 
learn to recognize in a printed form the words that 
are familiar to him by ear. These words constitute 
what is called the colloquial vocabulary. They are 
words that he has come to know from having heard 
them used by the members of his family and by his 
playmates. He uses these words himself with con- 
siderable skill, but what he knows by ear he does not 
yet know by sight. It will require many weeks, 
many months even, of constant effort at reading the 
printed page to bring him to the point where the 
sight of the written word brings up as much to his 
mind as the sound of the spoken word. But patience 
and practice will by and by make the printed word 
far more suggestive than the spoken word, as every 
scholar may testify. 

In order to bring about this familiarity with the 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. x i 

printed word it has been found necessary to re-en- 
force the reading in the school by supplementary 
reading at home. Books of the same grade of diffi- 
culty with the reader used in school are to be pro- 
vided If or the pupil. They must be so interesting 
to him that he will read them at home, using his time 
before and after school, and even his holidays, for 
this purpose. 

But this matter of familiarizing the child with the 
printed word is only one half of the object aimed at 
by the supplementary home reading. He should 
read that which interests him. He should read that 
which will increase his power in making deeper 
studies, and what he reads should tend to correct his 
habits of observation. Step by step he should be 
initiated into the scientific method. Too many ele- 
mentary books fail to teach the scientific method be- 
cause they point out in an unsystematic way only 
those features of the object which the untutored 
senses of the pupil would discover at first glance. It 
is not useful to tell the child to observe a piece of 
chalk and see that it is white, more or less friable, 
and that it makes a mark on a fence or a wall. Sci- 
entific observation goes immediately behind the facts 
which lie obvious to a superficial investigation. 
Above all, it directs attention to such features of the 
object as relate it to its environment. It directs at- 
tention to the features that have a causal influence in 
making the object what it is and in extending its 
effects to other objects. Science discovers the recip- 
rocal action of objects one upon another. 



4 
xii NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

After the child has learned how to observe what 
is essential in one class of objects he is in a measure 
fitted to observe for himself all objects that resemble 
this class. After he has learned how to observe the 
seeds of the milkweed, he is partially prepared to 
observe the seeds of the dandelion, the burdock, and 
the thistle. After he has learned how to study the 
history of his native country, he has acquired some 
ability to study the history of England and Scotland 
or France or Germany. In the same way the daily 
preparation of his reading lesson at school aids him 
to read a story of Dickens or Walter Scott. 

The teacher of a school will know how to obtain 
a small sum to invest in supplementary reading. In 
a graded school of four hundred pupils ten books of 
each number are sufficient, one set of ten books to be 
loaned the first week to the best pupils in one of the 
rooms, the next week to the ten pupils next in ability. 
On Monday afternoon a discussion should be held 
over the topics of interest to the pupils who have 
read the book. The pupils who have not yet read 
the book will become interested, and await anxiously 
their turn for the loan of the desired volume. Another 
set of ten books of a higher grade may be used in the 
same way in a room containing more advanced pupils. 
The older pupils who have left school, and also the 
parents, should avail themselves of the opportunity to 
read the books brought home from school. Thus is 
begun that continuous education by means of the pub- 
lic library which is not limited to the school period, 
but lasts through life. "W. T. Harris. 

Washington, D. C, Nov. 16, 1896. 




AUTHOK'S PKEFACE. 



i> ? 



Thanks to a number of 
wide-awake observers and en- 
gaging writers, ornithology is 
v fast becoming one of the 
most popular studies in our 
homes and schools. The birds 
are actually winning fame, and 
well they deserve all the laurels 
they have captured in recent years. Yonder 
little black -capped chickadee will soon be 
more of a celebrity than the virtuoso on the 
human stage, and the hermit thrush will steal 
the bays from the brow of the most renowned 
prima donna. Well, let it be so. We shall 




x iv NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

not be jealous of the plaudits given to the out- 
door choralists, even if we human performers 
are in a measure forgotten. 

Not only are books on birds in demand, 
but the ornithologist is often solicited to give 
talks and lectures in parlors, high schools, col- 
leges, and churches, and at popular summer 
assemblies. Even the stereopticon is being 
used to illustrate lectures on feathered folk, 
and young people, as. w 7 ell as their elders, seem 
to listen w T ith spellbound interest to the por- 
trayal of bird life, and are as ready to break 
into applause over some avian exploit as if it 
were a tale of human achievance or heroism. 
All these are cheering signs of the times, indi- 
cating a healthy moral and mental growth. 

Yes, the ethical life, as well as the intel- 
lectual, is stimulated by the enthusiastic study 
of Nature. All of us are familiar with Thomas 
Chalmers's famous discourse on The Expul- 
sive Power of a New Affection. The best way 
to crowd out the evil is to crowd in the good. 
Darkness flees before the advent of light. 
If we harbor pure thoughts there will be no 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xv 

room left in the mind for impure ones. Let 
a young person become absorbed in some 
interesting branch of natural history, and his 
moral safety will be guaranteed. Yet all this 
will be effected without any dull preachment, 
without even the suggestion, to say nothing of 
the obtrusion, of a moral purpose ; simply by 
the native power that such studies possess for 
expurgating the mind. Nor is the moral bene- 
fit solely negative ; positive good is derived 
from the contemplation of Nature, making the 
observer more humble, devout, and unselfish. 

This little book of tidings from birdland 
has been written with two purposes in mind. 
The first is, to furnish actual instruction, to 
tell some new facts about bird life that have 
not yet been recited — that is, to give a little 
bird " news." For the most part, it contains a 
record of my own observations, and is there- 
fore not a reiteration of what others have 
said. I have gone to the birds themselves for 
my facts, and have made very little use of 
books. The reader is taken into the actual 
outdoors. 



xv i NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

The second purpose of the book is inspira- 
tion. It is by no means a key. Perhaps a 
sufficient number of keys have already been 
issued. It would at least seem to me that the 
manuals of Dr. Coues, Mr. Kidgway, and Mr. 
Chapman leave little to be desired in the way 
of helps in the identification of species. In- 
stead of telling all that is or may be known 
about a particular bird, I have sought only to 
recite such incidents as will spur the reader to 
go out into the fields and woods and study 
the birds in their native haunts. Indeed, if he 
should lay the book aside and dash afield to 
see the birds themselves, I should not feel in 
the least slighted, but should regard it as the 
highest compliment that could be paid to my 
humble efforts. 

Even at the risk of dampening enthusiasm, 
it should be said that bird study is not all 
roseate. While in many respects it is like 
play, it also has in it the element of work. 
The birds will not often come to the observer ; 
he must usually go to the birds. He will 
often find them shy and elusive and hard to 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xvii 

approach. He will also suffer at times from 
heat, thirst, weariness, and mental depression. 
Mosquitoes and other insects will bite and 
sting him. Sometimes his efforts will be baf- 
fled and his hopes disappointed, and he will 
even be tempted more than once to doubt his 
"call" to the study of feathered creatures. 
But difficulties should not daunt him. He 
should rather feel a pride and an exhilaration 
in overcoming them, and should remember that 
faint heart never won anything that was worth 
winning. The delights of discovery and of 
commerce with Nature will more than compen- 
sate him for the few discouragements in the 
way. There is no royal road to natural his- 
tory, but it is, nevertheless, a most enchanting 
road. ' L. S. K. 

April 18, 1898. 



CONTENTS. 



Outdoor exercise . 
Seeing what you can see 
My winter companions . 
More winter exploits . 
Nests and nestlings 
Trials of a bird's life 
Our sweetest songsters 
the funny little owl . 
Birds at a summer resort 
The merry bobolink 
a lowland triller 
Talking birds 
a swift-winged tribe 
Marsh wrens . 
The vireos 
a winged fisherman 
A JOLLY field bird 
Travels of the birds 
In the ice-clad woods 
A boys' bird evening 
Birds and battlefields 



page 

1 

6 

18 

29 

37 

50 

59 

68 

75 

85 

89 

99 

108 

116 

121 

127 

133 

139 

150 

162 

172 



XX NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

PAGE 

Some curious nests 193 

The American quail 199 

a merry piper 208 

The Carolina wren . .' . . . . . .214 

If birds could talk ........ 221 

Index 227 



NOTE. 

To the editors and publishers of the va- 
rious periodicals in which the articles com- 
prising this volume were first published, the 
author would desire to make grateful acknowl- 
edgment for the privilege of reprinting them 
in more permanent form. Most of them first 
appeared in wide-awake young people's papers, 
while several were published in journals for 
older readers, among which may be mentioned 
The Evening Post, New York, The Living 
Church, Chicago, and The Ohio Educational 
Journal, Columbus, Ohio. 



Oh, happy life, to soar and sway 

Above the life by mortals led, 
Singing the merry months away, 

Master, not slave, of daily bread. 
And when the autumn comes, to flee 
Wherever sunshine beckons thee. 

James Eussell Lowell. 

You must have the bird in your heart before you can 
find it in the bush ; and when once you have it in your 
heart, the finding of it in the bush is a secondary matter. 

John Burroughs. 



TSEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 



OUTDOOK EXEECISE. 

An active, healthy boy said to me the other 
day that he wanted to go downtown to a gym- 
nasium. Now, I haven't a word to say against 
gymnasiums for those who must have them ; 
let them swing the dumb-bells as much as they 
like, turn handspring and somersault, and per- 
form any other exploits that will develop brawn 
and muscle and manly strength. But the lad 
to whom I refer lives in the suburbs of the 
city, and so I pointed to the beckoning fields 
and woods, stretching away in the rear of the 
house, and said, with some energy : 

" There is your gymnasium, my boy — the 
great, unlimited out-of-doors ! There you can 
get plenty of exercise, plenty of fresh air, and 
at the same time gather treasures of knowledge 
from Nature's exhaustless storehouse. That 
will be better, far better, than dumb-bells, 
swings, clubs, and ladders." 



2 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

And I repeat that advice to all who may 
deign to read this volume. Indoor calisthen- 
ics are for those who are cooped up in cities 
and can not go consorting with Nature. No ex- 
ercise is more healthful than walking, and if, in 
addition, you want to bring all the muscles of 
your body into play, why not climb a tree, or 
swing about in the saplings, as the chickadees 
do, or wrestle with a log as you roll it over the 
leaf -carpeted floor of the woods, or turn somer- 
sault and handspring on the soft sod of the 
meadow ? Let the sky witness your feats of 
skill and strength, and the birds chirp their ap- 
plause at some signal victory. Cultivate the 
outdoor spirit if you want to be healthy and 
wise, whether you ever become wealthy or not. 
Soundness of body is to be kept or won not so 
much by going after it in a self-conscious way 
as by becoming so absorbed in some pleasant 
and healthful pursuit that you forget all about 
your aches and pains, if you ever have any. 

In your outdoor recreations it is well enough 
to have some subject in which you are espe- 
cially interested — a hobby, if you choose to call 
it that. There are the rocks, the flowers, the 
insects, the mammals, the birds. You see, I 
mention the birds last to give my catalogue a 
kind of climax. Study whatever you like best, 



OUTDOOR EXERCISE. 3 

and do not merely loll and dream ; but I ex- 
tend to you an earnest and cordial invitation to 
cultivate the friendship of our happy feathered 
commoners, believing that no branch of natural 
history will afford you quite so much delight. 

But let me say first, last, and always, don't 
carry a gun, don't rob nests, don't in any way 
molest or injure the birds. Be true bird lovers, 
not scientific brigands and butchers, and then 
the birds will return your kindness with usury, 
by letting you into many a pretty secret of 
their glad lives. All the tools you need are a 
good opera glass, a standard manual or key, an 
alert mind, and a sharp eye. 

One of the indications, to my mind, of the 
growing army of real bird lovers is the fact that 
I receive scores of letters from young people 
and their elders all over the country, from 
Maine to California, asking for the titles and 
prices of the best manuals on bird study. 
These letters are always answered with pleas- 
ure, my only regret being that more inquirers 
do not make use of Uncle Sam's postal clever- 
ness. Perhaps the readers of this volume would 
be thankful for a little information on the sub- 
ject of helps in bird study, although I can not 
here give a bibliography of the subject. If you 
are a beginner, you will want a key — that is, 



4 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

a book which gives a clear and concise descrip- 
tion of the markings and habits of each species 
in your neighborhood. It might be a good 
plan to try to secure an official work on the 
birds of your State, if such a treatise has been 
published. I would suggest that you send in- 
quiries, inclosing a stamp, to Mr. L. S. Foster, 
publisher of The Auk, 33 Pine Street, New 
York, who is a most obliging gentleman. 

Meanwhile, I heartily recommend two man- 
uals covering the whole field of North Ameri- 
can ornithology, with the help of which -you may 
be able to identify any bird, no matter in what 
part of the land you may live. The first is Dr. 
Coues's Key to North American Birds, published 
by Estes & Lauriat, Boston, Mass., price $7.50. 
The second is Robert Eidgway's Manual of 
North American Birds, published by J. B. Lip 
pincott Company, Philadelphia, Pa., price $7.50. 
There are other cheaper works intended as aids 
in identifying the birds, but they are only frag- 
ments, and are therefore not of so much practi- 
cal service unless you have a complete manual 
besides. 

However, there is one recent work which I 
would especially commend to all bird students 
living in the eastern part of North America. 
Although of narrower range than Coues's or 



OUTDOOR EXERCISE. 5 

Ridgway's works, it is, in my opinion, the 
most serviceable manual for beginners that has 
yet been issued. I refer to Frank M. Chap- 
man's^ Handbook of Birds of Eastern North 
America — library edition, $3 ; pocket edition, 
$3.50. Bird Life, by the same author, with 
seventy-five colored plates, $5. These valua- 
ble works contain a description of every avian 
species found east of the Mississippi River 
from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, 
and is embellished with over two hundred 
excellent and lifelike pictures of birds. The 
descriptions are written by a bird enthusiast, 
so that the work, scientific as it is, is far from 
being a dry treatise. 

Mr. Chapman's handbook has another de- 
cided advantage : it is of a convenient size to be 
carried with you in your jaunts afield. Strap 
a haversack about your shoulders, stow in it 
this manual, a good opera glass, and an appe- 
tizing luncheon, and then you may hie forth 
early in the morning, feeling that you are amply 
equipped for an all-day ramble in the choice- 
est haunts of your feathered favorites. With 
the book and the glass you will be able to 
identify the birds on the spot, while the lunch- 
eon — well, you will need no special lecture on 
its desirability. 



SEEING WHAT YOU CAN SEE. 

And now, young friends, having had some 
words of council together, let us take a number 
of jaunts to the country, to see what we can 
see, to gain healthful exercise, and go to school 
to Nature, our loving mentor, all at the same 
time. Not for anything would I have missed 
the lessons I learned, one day of early spring, 
in one of my strolls. The farmer was plowing 
in a level field near the woods, and the robins 
and purple grackles were following in the 
moist furrows for worms and larvae. How the 
robin's breast blushed in the sunshine, showing 
almost crimson above the brown, newly turned- 
up soil ! And the grackles — never have I seen 
their glossy necks gleam so splendidly as when 
they caught the rays of the sun and flung them 
like purple spray to my eye. Looking as wise 
as Solomon and as stately as Caesar, they walked 
over the plowed ground, now and then stop- 
ping to pick up a billsome morsel, and then 
turning their white eyes to glance inquiringly 







Red- winged blackbird. 



8 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

at me, as if they wondered what might be my 
opinion of them. 

After watching them a while, I made my 
way to my favorite marsh, where I learned 
something new about a very familiar friend. 
A red- winged blackbird sat upon a small tree 
and sang his gurgling melody, " O-o-o-gl-e-e ! 
o-o-o-gl-e-e ! " and then, much to my surprise, 
broke into a fine, high-pitched twitter that I 
had never heard before. At first I looked 
around for another bird, but soon proved be- 
yond a doubt that Mr. Redwing was the au- 
thor of the half-musical, half-squeaking ditty. 
It seemed to be a sort of complaint, as if the 
bird were saying, " I do wish that man would 
go away, and not disturb me while I am re- 
hearsing my solo." 

Let me describe another ramble taken on 
a delightful June day to what I may call " a 
birds' meadow." A ride on the electric car to 
a park beyond the outskirts of the town, a 
pleasant walk through the park, followed by 
a tramp through a large tract of timber, 
brought me to the charmed inclosure. It was 
a long, narrow strip of green running up into 
the woods, very quiet and secluded. Not a 
house was in sight, and at only one or two 
places could I catch a glimpse of a carriage 



SEEING WHAT YOU CAN SEE. 9 

passing along the road beyond the woodland. 
It was a kind of cloistered spot where my dear 
little friends, the birds, could sing their songs 
and rear their broods undisturbed. 

Coleridge says, in The Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner, of the sea through which the ghost- 
like boat was sailing : 

So lonely 'twas that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be. 

But I must hasten to tell you that my meadow 
was not a place like that. It was sequestered, 
but by no means lonely. 

Near the middle of the field purled a little 
brook. It was fringed on either bank with 
small willows, briers, and bushes of various 
kinds, and here many birds found a pleasant 
dwelling place. I could not help giving fancy 
the reins for a little while as I stood at the 
border of the meadow. Here the bobolinks, 
meadow larks, song sparrows, brown thrashers, 
and summer warblers could make the air dance 
with song all the long summer days. What 
concerts they must have given early in the 
mornings ! Here, too, they could build their 
nests and rear their young unmolested by 
human foes. What plans for nest building 
must have buzzed through their wise little 

3 



10 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

heads ! If you could have witnessed all their 
doings and listened to all their sayings, you 
might have spun a story about them more 
charming than a fairy tale. 

But I must hurry along, or there will not 
be time to tell you about a pair of bobolinks 
which I watched for a long while. At first 
they were perched on the willows on the 
brook's bank. As I approached, they flew out 
and hovered over my head, calling in alarm 
that I should not go too near their nest. Do 
my young readers know the bobolink? He 
is that bird which lives in clover fields and 
meadows during the summer, and which wears 
a handsome suit of black, white, and yellowish. 
The w r hite extends down his back, and the 
yellowish stains the back of his neck. He 
sings a sw^eet, prolonged strain while circling 
in the air. His mate is quite different in color, 
being clad in modest brown. 

When alarmed, the male bird cried " Chack ! 
chack ! " in tones almost as harsh as those of the 
blackbird. Strangely enough, his brown little 
wife uttered a call in a much higher and mel- 
lower tone, which told that she was very un- 
easy about something. In spite of Mr. Bobo- 
link's anxiety, he could not help darting out 
into the air every now and then and bursting 



SEEING WHAT YOU CAN SEE. H 

into song. His throat seemed to be a fountain 
of music, from which his clear, bell-like tones 
gurgled and bubbled and rippled, leaving a 
trail of song spray behind him as he floated 
through the air. 

It was evident, from the behavior of the 
two birds, that they had a nest somewhere in 
the grass. So I took my stand at some distance 
to watch them, hoping they would dart down to 
the nest and thus give me a chance to discover 
their secret. But they had their nimble wits 
about them. Mark how they managed, to 
throw me off the track. Whenever I started 
toward the . place where the female had 
alighted, her mate would give the alarm by 
loud chattering and singing, which would 
bring her up from the grass before I could get 
near. To mix matters still worse, she would 
always rise at a point some distance from the 
spot at which she had descended. This proved 
that she had been running about in the grass 
instead of sitting on the nest or feeding her 
young. Besides, she descended at so many dif- 
ferent places that I could form no idea where 
the nest might be. There could be no doubt 
that young birds were cuddled some where in 
the tall grass, for the mother bird often held 
an insect in her bill intended for her babies. 



12 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

The male was also shrewd and wary. He 
was not going to betray their secret, nor allow 
his mate to do so — no ! no ! Whenever she 
started to fly down from the bushes into the 
grass, evidently to feed her little ones, he would 
dart after her like a living arrow, and drive 
her around and around over the meadow, until 
she would drop into the grass or plunge into 
the thicket to escape him. All the while he 
would sing with might and main. No doubt 
he did this to prevent her from betraying the 
whereabouts of the nestlings. Don't you think 
he was a cunning; bird ? He seemed to sav : 
"There's no bobolink's nest within a mile of 
here, sir. Why, can't you see ? Our courtship 
days are not over ! "' 

Much as I wanted to find the nest, the birds 
outwitted me, and so I strolled farther down 
the stream. Presently a cuckoo flew out of a 
wild -rose copse. On pushing aside the bushes, 
I found her nest. It contained but one egg. 
Indeed, it was so loosely put together that I 
did not see how it could hold more. How it 
could sustain the weight of the sitting bird was 
a problem. I have seen cuckoo nests that were 
quite well built, but this bird could not have 
been much of a carpenter. If you could see an 
unfledged baby cuckoo I am sure you would 



SEEING WHAT YOU CAN SEE. 13 

laugh. His skin is as black as a crow's feath- 
ers, and is covered sparsely with thick, stiff 
bristles. But he feathers very rapidly, and 
leaves^the nest much sooner than most perching 
birds. 

Near the lower end of the meadow another 
male bobolink was swinging on the top of a 
small willow tree. He began chirping uneasily. 
Surely there must be a nest near at hand. 
The female was nowhere to be seen. No 
doubt she was sitting on the nest. The fore- 
noon was slipping aw^ay, and I could not wait 
for her to fly up and show me where her cot- 
tage was hidden. So I stalked about in the 
tall grass, hoping to be fortunate enough to 
stumble upon the nest. Suddenly the female 
flew up before me with a cry of alarm which 
meant that she had been driven from her cradle- 
Yes, there it was, deftly built in a grass tuft, 
the bottom resting on the ground. It con- 
tained six half-fledged baby birds, which, after 
the fashion of most nestlings, opened their 
carmine-lined mouths for food as the spectator 
bent over them. They looked warm and damp, 
lying there in the broiling sun, and acted as if 
they were almost suffocated. 

This was only the third bobolink's nest I 
had ever found. The other two were some- 



14 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

what different. They were fixed in a small 
hollow scooped out of the ground by the birds 
themselves, and were snugly ensconced in 
the grass, one of them being daintily roofed 
over with plantain leaves. This one in the 
meadow, however, rested on the ground and 
grass roots, and. was not sunk into the soil at 
all, nor was it protected above. Thus it will 
be seen that birds of the same species build 
after various designs. No two bird houses are 
precisely alike, and this gives charm and vari- 
ety to nest hunting. 

The parent birds were greatly alarmed 
when they saw that their little homestead had 
been found. What a pother they made ! They 
flew out from the willows and hovered over- 
head like the red-winged blackbirds, crying 
pitifully : " Don't steal 'em ! please don't ! We 
love 'em so ! " Of course, I wouldn't rob a 
pretty nest, and not one of my young readers 
will ever be heartless enough to do so. 

There were many other birds in this mead- 
ow, but the only other nest found w r as one of 
the brown thrasher, which was raising its sec- 
ond brood. On my way home in the park I 
happened to glance up and saw a flicker's head 
protruding from a hole in the trunk of a young 
oak tree. She looked at me in a quizzical w T ay, 



SEEING WHAT YOU CAN SEE. 15 

turning her head from side to side, as if asking 
what my business was. I tapped the trunk of 
the tree with my cane, but she w T ould not fly 
from the hole. Of course, it was her nest, and 
she was not going to desert it. The tree was 
not more than two rods from the end of the 
electric railway. Here, where hundreds of pic- 
nickers often came, this bird had chiseled out 
her nursery and was rearing her brood. 

One who has a mania for birds can scarcely 
take a ramble even to the adjacent field with- 
out witnessing some incident worth recording. 
More than that, the birds that one has studied 
for years are constantly performing new tricks, 
so that one can never become weary of the 
study of them. 

Here is an example. In one of my strolls 
my familiar little friend, the black-capped 
chickadee, was tilting about in the willows at 
the border of the swamp. It seemed scarcely 
worth while to spend any time with him, for I 
had studied him so much that surely none of 
his performances could surprise me. Still, I 
decided to tarry a few minutes and watch him. 
Good thing I did. The little fellow darted 
from the willow withes to the fence near at 
hand, and alighted on the upper side of the 
second rail from the top. The top rail was a 



16 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

little over a foot higher. Then what did chick- 
adee do but fling himself straight upward, turn- 
ing halfway around as he did so, and cling 
with his claws to the under side of the upper 
rail ! Picking a nit or a worm, he let himself 
drop, wheeled around like a cat, and alighted 
on his feet on the rail below. But that was 
not enough. Perhaps he thought I had not 
seen him, or might not believe my eyes if I 
witnessed the feat only once, and so he re- 
peated it, as much as to say : " There ! You 
can be sure now you saw me perform that trick, 
if you want to write up any more of my ex- 
ploits for the entertainment of your friends.' 7 

Think of a bird being able to wheel around 
in ascending only a foot, and catch himself with 
his claws on the flat under surface of a rail ! 
He ought to have a gold medal ! 

Another chickadee at the same place had 
found a dainty of some kind, which he was 
holding with his claws on a perch near the 
ground and nibbling greedily with his bill. I 
was anxious to know what his dinner was com- 
posed of, and so I slyly drew near. He was 
not very skittish, but allowed me to come 
within a few feet of him ; but when I stepped 
smartly forward, he seized the delicacy in his 
bill and scuttled off with it, so that my prob- 



SEEING WHAT YOU CAN SEE. 17 

lern went unsolved. How he scolded and chat- 
tered ! " You highwayman, bandit, brigand ! 
Do you want to rob a little bird of his dinner ? " 
he demanded. 

And thus, you see, if you will make the 
great outdoors your gymnasium and will keep 
your senses alert, you will discover many a 
quaint bird antic that escapes duller eyes, win- 
ning for yourselves at the same time robustness 
of body, keenness of observation, and tonic for 
the mind. Try it. Nature will charge you no 
admission fee to her exercise grounds, her con- 
certs, her menageries, and her aviaries. 



MY WINTEK COMPANIONS. 

Nothing in outdoor study is more interest-, 
ing than a comparison of the conduct of the 
birds in the same season of different years, 
for it must not be thought that they always 
behave in the same way. The present winter 
— this w r as written in the winter of 1892-'93 
— has been much colder than last, and so the 
feathered folk have changed their manners 
somewhat, to suit the changed conditions. 

Here are a few instances : Last winter the 
meadow larks remained in my neighborhood 
until the 30th of December, singing a dirge — 
although it was rather cheerful to be called 
that — to the dying year ; this winter they 
were off to the south before the first cold wave 
came in November. A year ago there were 
flickers and bluebirds in abundance all winter 
in my favorite woodland, whereas this year 
none have been seen since the middle of De- 
cember. But, most unaccountable of all, last 
winter, no matter how stormy the weather, I 

18 



MY WINTER COMPANIONS. 19 

found flocks of snowbirds and tree sparrows, 
and felt sure that they were the hardiest birds 
of my acquaintance ; but this winter only a 
single bird of these species is seen here and 
there. If it is the cold weather that has driven 
them away, one feels disappointed in their 
powers of endurance, for they can not bear as 
rigorous a season as some of our constant resi- 
dents — the nuthatches and song sparrows, for 
example. 

But here are some facts of a different na- 
ture : The brown creepers and kinglets disap- 
peared last winter when the weather became 
warm, while, during the present season, when 
we have snow and nipping, eager winds and 
sinking thermometers all the while, they are 
often found in the woods and seem to be as 
lively and care-free as children at their coast- 
ing or skating. The creepers, especially, 
revel in the cold weather, and perhaps take a 
jaunt to the north in the winter time, if old 
Sol grows too familiar. He — the creeper — 
does not wear that thick waistcoat of feathers 
for nothing, and he believes in winter, in the 
reality as well as the name. Never has he 
been more cheerful than this winter, when 
the mercury stood at six to ten degrees below 
zero. 



20 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

But those pygmies in plumes, the golden- 
crowned kinglets — no larger than a man's 
thumb — how do they manage to keep Jack 
Frost at bay ? It may well be asked, indeed, 
how birds in general keep warm in winter, liv- 
ing, as they do, on cold branches or the frozen 
ground. During the clay constantly in motion, 
flitting here and there and everywhere, in 
search of seeds and insects, their constant 
exercise generates warmth in their bodies. 
When night comes some of them, no doubt, 
creep into hollow limbs and tree trunks, and, if 
they cuddle close together, like children in bed, 
there is little danger of their freezing. 

But the song sparrows, which have been 
living along the small stream in the marsh, are 
not the kind of birds that plunge into holes in 
the trees. They find little, well-covered apart- 
ments beneath the overhanging sod of the 
banks, where the dead weeds, vines, and grasses 
are sufficiently thick to hold up the snow that 
forms a roof over them. Some of these little 
rooms are quite cozy, and well protected from 
the keen, biting winds. The sparrows often 
dart up from these hiding places as I walk 
about in the marsh. 

A friend living in northern Indiana — evi- 
dently a close observer of birds — writes an in- 



MY WINTER COMPANIONS. 21 

terestino; account of the behavior of certain 
woodpeckers of his neighborhood in the winter 
time. His description is graphic : 

" This woodpecker's home," he writes, " will 
be found in the hollow limb of a large tree, far 
above the reach of the mink or the weasel, and, 
should Mr. Raccoon apply for admission at the 
door, he will find it too small to enter. So, 
you see, the bird is safe from harm, and need 
have no fear of the four-footed animals. But 
the owl and hawk are his greatest enemies, and 
it is amusing to see him in the morning peep- 
ing out of his window^ to ascertain if the coast 
is clear before he flits over to a neighboring 
log or partially decayed tree, where, beneath 
the bark, lie numerous large, fat, white worms, 
good enough for the daintiest feathered epicure. 
He is a warm-blooded fellow, and seems to rel- 
ish being out of doors when the weather is cold- 
est." It is almost romantic, not to say thrilling, 
to think of this hardy knight of the woods sit- 
ting, warm and happy, in his castle in a tall tree, 
while the wintry storm howls dismally around 
his abode. 

One seldom fails to witness some freak of 
bird behavior worth recording when one takes 
a tramp to the woods. There, for example, was 
the little crested titmouse which I watched on 



22 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

a winter day. He had pulled from its resting 
place the larva of a caterpillar wrapped in its 
thick, tough cocoon, and was holding it with 
his claws to a limb while he pecked away at it 
for dear life, trying to break through the 
tough, leatherlike covering. I went near him 
to see how he did it, when he attempted to 
pick up his morsel with his beak and fly 
farther away with it ; but it proved too large 
for him to handle easily, and so it tumbled 
down into the deep snow. 

Down scampered the bird after it, almost 
immersing his little body in the snow. But I 
reached the spot before he could get a good 
hold on the larva, and so he flew' reluctantly 
away. The chrysalis case was broken at one 
side, proving that the bird's efforts had not 
been unavailing. Not wishing to rob him of 
his dinner, I placed the larva on the fork of a 
limb, and stepped back some distance, when, 
after sundry fits and starts, which said, " No, I 
guess I won't," and then, " Yes, I guess I will," 
Master Tit flew back to his luncheon and 
finished it with much gusto. Another titmouse 
on the same day found a nest of spider's eggs 
in a clump of dead leaves, and forthwith dis- 
patched them without saying by your leave. 

The black-capped chickadees are also con- 



MY WINTER COMPANIONS. 23 

staiitly on the lookout for live or hibernating 
delicacies in the winter season, as are also the 
kinglets. How cunning and laughable it is to 
watch one of them thrusting his tiny beak and 
head into a cluster of leaves to see if there are 
eatables within ! If there are, the birds will 
work with might and main until the insects 
are stowed away in their craws. 

But how do the birds quench their thirst 
when all the streams and ponds are covered 
with ice and snow ? Oh, that does not puzzle 
them for a moment ! They simply eat snow, 
as you have probably seen farmyard fowls do. 
" When snow is melted, it is as wet as water," 
is evidently their way of expressing it. 

Why has not Nature, so thoughtful in many 
respects, made stockings for the birds ? Every 
other part of their bodies is quite well protect- 
ed, but their little feet are bare, and must often 
get frostbitten. You have no doubt seen the 
English sparrows squatting flat on their breasts 
pecking offal or seeds from the snow, or per- 
haps holding up one foot, and then the other, 
in their feathery pockets to warm them. 

Yet it is remarkable how long some birds 
can continue to wade about in the snow. A 
flock of horned or shore larks remained in my 
neighborhood one winter, and in an adjacent 



24 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

field they were often running about in the snow 
and picking up the fragments of corn left where 
a number of hogs were fed. Their dainty paths 
could often be traced for Ions; distances. The 
feet of birds are evidently tough and compara- 
tively free from nerves of sensation. 

Charming creatures they are, these fellow- 
citizens with pinions, always developing some 
new trait of character that proves them any- 
thing but shallow and monotonous. There was 
some clearing being done one winter in a part 
of the woods, and the birds were fond of lin- 
gering near to gather such dainties as the wood- 
men's axes may have exposed. 

One day I stumbled upon a whole company 
of birds of various species, where several men 
had cut up a tree. The feathered banqueters 
examined the chips and pieces of bark strewn 
on the ground, the piles of cord wood, the brush 
heaps near by, and the low stump from which 
the tree had been cut, and they seemed to find 
many a grub and larva to their taste. No doubt 
these tidbits were forced out of their winter 
hiding places in the wood and bark by the axes 
of the choppers. 

A bird that has interested me greatly dur- 
ing the past winter was the red-breasted wood- 
pecker. He is a very handsome fellow, with 



MY WINTER COMPANIONS. 25 

his striped suit of black and white and his 
brilliant red cap — a genuine drum major. This 
has been the first winter I have seen him here 
in central Ohio, although he is a regular spring 
and fall migrant. But the curious thing about 
his conduct was that he was here in the early 
part of the winter, and then disappeared for fully 
a month during the extremely cold weather ; but 
by the last of January he returned, and was as 
pert and as much at home as if he had not 
gone away at all. Then he went off on another 
jaunt— at least he could not be found in the 
woods, search as I would — and after a week or 
so of absence returned again. It is a puzzling 
question whither he had gone. Did he make a 
trip farther south to a more friendly climate ? 
or did he merely fly to some other woodland 
where food was more abundant ? or could it be 
that he had only concealed himself in my own 
woods, so that I could not find him ? You see 
how many problems bird study presents that it 
is impossible to solve. 

Among the many young people who have 
written to me about birds is a bright girl in 
southern Michigan. When I expressed sur- 
prise that the red-breasted woodpecker, or 
"zebra bird," as he is frequently called, was 
wintering in my neighborhood, she at once 

4 



26 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

wrote me that this species has remained in her 
latitude every winter since she has begun to 
observe the birds. 

" Scarcely a day passes, when I am out of 
doors, but I see one of these birds on our wal- 
nut trees/' she writes. "This morning the 
thermometer was eight degrees below zero, 
with a strong wind blowing and snow falling 
fast. I put on my rubber boots and waded 
out to see how the birds were faring, and 
found the red-breasted woodpecker, as usual, 
scurrying up and dow^n the walnut trees, ap- 
parently finding many a tasteful morsel. He 
is so tame that he doesn't mind being looked 
at when near the house. Having satisfied his 
appetite for insects, he flew over to a crack in 
the bin and regaled himself on corn." 

These facts are of deep interest to the lover 
of feathered folk, but no less interesting is the 
fact that this girl would wade out through the 
deep snow on a bitter winter morning to study 
them. What a legion of young bird students 
we shall have in the near future ! Their num- 
ber is increasing every day. 

I am minded to add a little more about 
birds from the pen of my interesting corre- 
spondent : 

u The constant companions of Mr. Zebra 



MY WINTER COMPANIONS. 27 

Bird/' she writes, "are the nuthatches, which 
are very tame, and stay about the premises all 
the while, both summer and winter. The like 
may be said of the chickadees.'' Her little 
sisters have their playhouse in the garret, 
w r hich overlooks the woodshed, and, as they 
keep crumbs scattered over the roof of this 
shed, the birds are well fed, and become so 
tame that they even go inside the garret while 
the children are eating their luncheon. She 
keeps cracked walnuts for her pets in the shed, 
and one day, when she climbed into a walnut 
tree, she found many of the crannies of the 
bark crammed with kernels. She also found 
a grain of corn in a crevice. Uncertain 
whether it was the work of squirrels or birds, 
she kept watch, and saw a nuthatch seize a 
kernel and hammer it into a gully of the bark, 
crying,. " Quank ! quank ! " in a very knowing 
way. This vigilant, quick-witted girl will be 
a genuine naturalist by and by. 

Where I live, no less interesting bird ways 
have been observed. In the former part of 
this chapter I spoke with some surprise of the 
absence of the snowbirds and the tree spar- 
rows. A week or so after that was written I 
found rather large, scattering flocks of both 
species, although since then they have not 



28 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

been seen so regularly as in other winters. 
Sometimes the snowbirds were missing, then 
the sparrows, and at other times both. 

One time the weather became so cold that 
the mercury sank to nineteen degrees below 
zero, in some places twenty -two ; but when I 
tramped out to the woods — I had to wrap up 
warm to keep from freezing — I found the 
hardy little tree sparrows flitting about on the 
snow as cheerily as you please, rifling the weeds 
of their seedy treasures. They really did not 
seem in the least to mind the bitter-cold 
winds, and I did not see them draw their little 
bare feet up into their feathers to keep them 
from becoming chilblained. 



MOEE WINTER EXPLOITS. 

No bird acquaintance of mine has proved 
more interesting than the little brown creeper. 

One February day I saw a creeper behave 
himself in an unheard-of way. He was flitting 
about the base of a large oak tree, covered in 
places with green moss and gray lichens. 
Sometimes he would march up a few feet, 
and then shuffle straight down, sidewise, 
though never headforemost. Presently he 
wheeled ,clear around twice, without moving 
out of his tracks. Was he converting himself 
into a whirligig ? I felt almost like saying 
" Next ! " to the little performer. Some of 
these days I expect to see him stand on his 
head or turn a somersault/ 

My neighbor, the farmer across the fields, 
has enabled me to identify a new bird this 
winter. He shot a hawk and handed it to me, 
saying : 

" Here is a hawk I've never seen before. I 
think it must be a new kind. I wish you'd 
find out what it is and let me know 7 ." 

29 



30 



NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 




The red-shouldered hawk. 

I bore it home to my 
study, and consulting my 
bird manual, found the bird 
to be the red-shouldered 
hawk — a very fine specimen. 
His shoulders, or wing cov- 
erts, were a rusty red or 
brown ; his lower parts beau- 
tifully striped and mottled with rufous and 



MORE WINTER EXPLOITS. 31 

white, while his long tail was handsomely 
barred with black and white. What a pity 
that so regal a bird should be a conscience- 
less freebooter preying on our beautiful and 
innocent song birds ! 

I was much interested in a colony of song 
sparrows dwelling in a marsh during the same 
winter. One day when the snow lay deep 
everywhere a sparrow hawk was prowling 
about the marsh, and when I waded along the 
stream I could find but two of my song spar- 
rows. A day or two later not a sparrow was 
to be found, but two murderous hawks were 
gliding around in their oily way. No doubt 
the bloodthirsty birds had killed some of the 
innocent sparrows, for the bushes and weeds 
were so thickly covered with snow that they 
could find very few places in which to hide 
from their merciless enemies. 

While the snow lasted no sparrows were 
to be found in the marsh, but you may imagine 
my joy and surprise to find that they returned 
— at least some of them — when the snow melt- 
ed. They had perhaps sought better hiding 
places when the hawks came, and remained 
concealed until it was safe to return to their 
favorite feeding ground in the swamp. 

How the snowbirds and tree sparrows de- 



32 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

light to hop about on the snow, eating seeds 
and making dainty trails ! This I saw them do 
one day when the weather w^as fierce, my farmer 
neighbor declaring that the mercury had stood 
at twenty -two degrees below zero in the morn- 
ing. The birds seemed to be very comfortable 
without stockings or shoes. Nature has given 
them all the foot gear they need. More would 
only be in the w x ay. 

As the spring advances and the w T eather 
becomes milder, the birds regain their lost 
voices, and if my readers will then go out of 
doors they will find all the w^oods and fields, 
uplands and lowlands, flooded with melody. 
I give you a season ticket free to all the out- 
door concerts you have time to attend. Do 
not let the opportunity go by unimproved. 

How much we miss by not being always on 
the alert ! " Always " is a good time to have 
your eyes open. This is true in the study of 
Nature as well as in the study of anything else. 
I read in a book a good many years ago that it 
was not worth while to study the birds in mid- 
summer, as they were then molting and did 
scarcely anything but skulk about among the 
bushes, ashamed to be seen. 

That advice did me a great deal of harm for 
several years, but at last I resolved to test it for 



MORE WINTER EXPLOITS. 33 

myself, and was surprised to learn that mid- 
summer is almost as good a time as any for the 
study of feathered folk. The nests of doves, 
cardinal grossbeaks, goldfinches, and indigo 
birds rewarded my search even in the latter 
part of August. 

There are persons who think Nature is not 
worth studying in the winter time, but I know 
a writer who finds the most wonderful things 
to describe in that season. A frozen pond fur- 
nishes him a subject for a long and delightful 
essay. He sees jewels, pearls, and diamonds 
on its frost-bound surface and along its broid- 
ered edges, and I often wonder why I am not 
dowered with such a wonderful double vision 
as he. 

But in my own line I do see a great deal in 
the blessed winter wealher. Take one day as 
an example. A zebra bird had been seen in 
my woodland a few days before, and I was 
anxious to know if he still was present. But 
on reaching the spot in the woods where he 
and a colony of other birds had been wont to 
linger, not a feathered flitter was to be found 
nor a voice heard. So I pressed on through the 
woods, almost to the other side, before I saw a 
single flash of wings. Suddenly, as the sun 
peeped out from behind a cloud, the soft, 



34 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

sweet whistle of the black-capped tomtit fell 
on my ear. It seemed like a silvery arrow fly- 
ing through the nipping, frosty air. 

A little farther on there were crested tits, 
nuthatches, kinglets, and woodpeckers in abun- 
dance, and one robin, with a blushing breast 
that made him look as if he had taken a bath 
in red paint. A crested tit flew to a little snag 
sticking in the ground, and drew out some- 
thing that he relished from the splintered end. 
On examining the branch, I could see the little 
pocket in which the delicacy had been stored. 
The bird had probably put it there in the 
autumn for winter use, thrifty little husband- 
man that he was. 

But the most cunning bird trick I saw that 
day was performed by the brown tree creeper. 
It was only the second time that I had seen 
the antic. You must remember that this odd 
bird never perches, but always creeps up or 
clings to the side of a tree or branch. How do 
you suppose he manages to preen his feathers 
after he has taken a bath ? On that day he 
clung to the trunk of an oak and put his robes 
in order with his bill. He would often perk 
up his tail in a most cunning way as he reached 
back to arrange some of the quills. At length 
he flew to a slanting; limb, where he could hold 



MORE WINTER EXPLOITS. 35 

himself more easily, and continued making his 
toilet. 

However, hunt as I would, I could not find 
my red-breasted wood pecker, or zebra bird. So 
I started homeward— for my time was limited — 
feeling somewhat disappointed. Passing by the 
place where I had expected, less than half an 
hour before, to find him, but had not been able 
to see a single bird, I suddenly heard a sharp 
chirp. Turning back, I soon espied a company 
of birds of various species, among them my 
zebra bird, calling, " Chack ! chack ! " in his 
harsh but cordial tones. Where had those 
birds been when I had passed that spot before ? 
That is a question I can not answer with cer- 
tainty. Perhaps they were picnicking in some 
other part of the woods, and had returned dur- 
ing my absence. At all events, my ramble 
proved that it is best to have one's eyes open 
all the time, for the unexpected is sure to 
happen. 

One of the prettiest bird performances I 
have ever seen took place in the woods in 
January. The juncos, or snowbirds, were the 
actors in the little scene. Snow lay on the 
ground. The birds were hungry, and took 
their luncheon in the following unique way. 
They would fly upon a slender weed stalk, 



36 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

bend it down with their weight, and hold it on 
the ground with their feet, while they rifled the 
pods of their seeds ; then they would hop off 
the stem and allow it to swing up to an up- 
right position, after which they would pick up 
any seeds that might have been shaken out on 
the ground. They did this again and again, 
so that it may be set down as one of the 
pretty " ways " of Master Junco. 



NESTS AND NESTLINGS. 

We call a boy or girl who learns very fast, 
precocious. There are birds to which this term 
might be applied as well. Not all birds are 
equally apt at learning, nor do all grow with 
equal rapidity. Of three half -fledged wood 
thrushes which I brought home from the woods 
one day for pets, one of them was a good deal 
larger than the rest, and hopped out of the nest 
over a day before they did. He also was the 
most intelligent, sang long before his mates did, 
set them the example in everything, and even 
showed them very soon that he was the auto- 
crat of the cage. 

But the most curious instance of a young 
bird's superiority to his fellow nestlings was 
observed in a brown thrasher's nest which I 
found one summer. One of the youngsters was 
almost twice as large as the other occupants of 
the bird homestead, his pinfeathers and quills 
showing very plainly when I first discovered 
the nest, while his little brothers were covered 
only with soft fuzz and down. When I next 



38 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

visited the place, lie took up the greater part of 
the nest, his smaller companions cuddling under 
his wings. I marked him for a pet. So one 
evening I walked out to the meadow, and put 
my hand on the precocious youngster ; he made 
such a vigorous leap that he almost wrenched 
himself from my grasp ; but I held him fast and 
bore him home in triumph. The other bird- 
lings were so inferior to this sturdy fellow that, 
with all the racket he made, they only squatted 
close to the bottom of the nest, and did not try 
to escape. 

Brownie — for that was the name I gave my 
precious pet — grew very fast and became a 
bright, sensible bird, and an excellent singer. 

Nothing is more absorbing than the hunt- 
ing and study of nests. Where would you 
look for the nests of the little goldfinches? 
You will find them mostly on small trees — 
maple trees seem to be preferred — -such as line 
the streets of towns. They make a compact 
little basket, built of fine grass fibers, thistle 
down, and wool. It is placed neatly in the 
crotch of a bough, where it is well supported 
all around. But you would not be likely to 
look in a blackberry thicket for a goldfinch's 
nest, would you ? Yet one summer, much to 
my surprise, I found one in such a place. 



NESTS AND NESTLINGS. 39 

The wood thrushes build their thatched cot- 
tages in the saplings that grow in the woods, 
often by the side of a winding path or wagon 
road, while the brown thrasher selects a thicket 
of bushes, a brush heap, or even the ground, for 
a building site. Catbirds like a bush ; towhee 
buntings choose mother earth, that being a sub- 
stantial foundation, although they sometimes 
prefer a thick bush like the catbird ; vesper 
sparrows, black - throated buntings, meadow 
larks, and bobolinks conceal their nests in the 
grass or clover of fields ; orchard and Baltimore 
orioles hang their hammocks on a swaying 
branch, sometimes quite high in a tree, and 
sometimes within arm's reach from the ground ; 
for the nests of bluebirds, nuthatches, and chick- 
adees you must look into the natural cavities or 
deserted woodpecker holes of trees and stumps ; 
bank swallows and kingfishers burrow in the 
high banks along the streams ; and woodpeck- 
ers, which are the carpenters among birds, chisel 
out holes in dead tree trunks or branches. 

But it would take too long to go through 
the whole list. The best way to know these 
things thoroughly is to study them for your- 
selves, so that you will seldom look in the wrong 
place for a certain species of bird's nest. Be- 
cause the meadow lark often sits on the top of 



40 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

a tall tree and sings his piercing melody, is no 
indication tliat he builds his nest on trees, any 
more than it is an indication that the flicker 
builds on the ground because he often goes 
prancing about in the grassy fields. 

Have you read Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster's 
beautiful poem, The Building of the Nest ? 
Flow your blood never so sluggishly, it will 
quicken its pace if you read this stanza: 

They'll come again to the apple tree — 

Robin and all the rest — 
When the orchard branches are fair to see 

In the snow of the blossoms dressed, 
And the prettiest thing in the world will be 

The building of the nest. 

It takes human children several years to 
learn to help themselves to their food, but 
bird children learn it in a few weeks. Does 
that prove that birds are smarter than people ? 
Perhaps it would not be safe to say that, but 
still it is true that, while birds have not so 
much to learn in life as people have, they learn 
their lessons much more quickly. 

Queer — isn't it ? — what devices Nature 
makes use of for carrying on her work in all 
the various parts of her domain. No sooner 
has the little bird got well out of the shell 
than it begins to open its mouth as wide as it 



NESTS AND NESTLINGS. 41 

can for food ! How does it know that it is to 
get its victuals in tliat way ? Its instinct is its 
earliest teacher, and a wonderful teacher it is. 
Of course the parent birds know beforehand 
that their baby will want its dinner very soon 
after it breaks from its shell, and so they pro- 
vide a small delicacy of the kind best adapted 
to the young bird's taste and stomach, and 
thrust it into its open mouth well down its 
throat. Then it is just as natural for the baby 
to swallow as it is to open its mouth, and so 
down its throat goes the tidbit. 

The infant birds will lie in the nest quietly 
until they hear the rustle of the old bird's 
wings as she flies to the rim of the nest, when 
they will forthwith leap to their feet, crane 
out their necks, and pry open their mouths 
from ear to ear. Sometimes, if the mother has 
a large worm or several worms in her mouth, 
she will parcel them out to her crying brood, 
until she has gone clear around the hungry 
circle. Then she looks at them lovingly for a 
moment, to see if they are all safe and well, 
and presently darts away for another supply. 

But there are some birds which have a 
very quaint way of feeding their downy bairns. 
There, for instance, are the hummingbirds. 
Mr. Bradford Torrey, one of the most pleasing 



42 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

writers on American birds, has described the 
process in his book entitled, The Foot-Path 
Way. He has w^atched it more than once. 
He says that the little bird opens its month, 
and then the mother thrusts her long, slender 
bill down its throat as far as she can, like a 
ramrod into a gun barrel, after which she goes 
through a series of forward plunges that are 
really terrible to witness. In this way she 
pumps the honey she has gathered, out of her 
own stomach, and forces it into the stomach of 
her baby. This process is known by a long, 
hard name — too hard a one for some of our 
young readers to manage — regurgitation. 

Bird babies are as greedy as any human 
babies you ever saw. All the use they seem 
to have for their parents is to supply them 
with food — to be their caterers, as it were. 
"Brownie," the young thrasher I took from 
the nest to raise by hand, was so greedy that 
he would leap up and gulp down not only the 
food I offered him, but also the end of the 
finger on which I held it. And you wouldn't 
believe how much he needed to satisfy his 
ravenous appetite. He reminded me of a 
growing boy of fourteen, who eats all the 
bread on the plate, all the potatoes, cabbage, 
and pie near at hand, and then clamors for 



NESTS AND NESTLINGS. 43 

more. No wonder parent birds often have a 
weary, jaded look, waiting on a half -dozen 
youngsters with wolfish appetites from morn- 
ing till night. I have watched a faithful 
mother at her arduous toil, and have seen her 
bring, on an average, one insect every minute 
for considerably over half an hour. 

After the little birds have left the nest 
they are still unable to, find their own food. 
They do not seem to understand the art of 
picking, or of catching insects, but sit help- 
lessly on a twig, opening their mouths when- 
ever the parent birds approach. But somehow 
they gradually learn to help themselves, per- 
haps as much by the example of adult birds 
as in any other way. I think, though I can not 
be positive, that the parents give their children 
lessons in the art of procuring a livelihood. I 
once saw a pair of phoebes teaching a well- 
fledged brood how to catch insects on the 
wing ; at least, it looked very much as if they 
were giving them their lessons. 

Yet young birds will learn in time to peck 
and gather food without a single feathered 
tutor to teach them. Their own instinct seems 
to suggest how to use their beaks, so that they 
do not make the mistake of picking up a 
dainty with their feet, or of lapping water 



44 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

with their tongues. Tlie birds which I have 
reared — bluebirds, wood thrushes and a brown 
thrasher — had to be fed by hand for two or 
three weeks or more, but by and by they 
began of their own accord to peck awkwardly 
at their food, keeping it up until they became 
expert and could rely solely upon their own 
efforts. 

Everything had to be learned by degrees. 
At first they were unable to move their food 
back into their throats from the ends of their 
beaks, and would often flick it away in their 
efforts to swallow it ; but after a while they 
learned the use of their tongues, and were able 
to swallow as fast as they could pick up their 
food. The first awkward attempts, however, 
were very laughable. So was the look of sur- 
prise that they bent upon me when I gave 
them a tidbit that they did not relish, w T hich 
sometimes happened in my experimenting. If 
I kept on with the same kind of food, they 
would refuse to take it, the drollest look of 
disgust coming into their eyes. 

Some people think a nestful of young birds 
anything but a pretty sight. It is true, nest- 
lings that are still callow or in their pin- 
feathers are not as handsome as they will be 
by and by when they have donned their com- 



NESTS AND NESTLINGS. 45 

plete outfit ; and yet few things are more cun- 
ning and dainty than a bird cradle full of 
little ones. They look so cozy and comfortable 
as they cuddle down close to the bottom 
of the nest, and, withal, so innocent. I can 
seldom refrain from touching or stroking 
them with my hand, merely as an expression 
of affection, as you caress a favorite dog or 
cat. 

Sometimes they do not seem to mind being 
stroked, but will look up at you as confidingly 
as little children. At other times they will 
open their mouths for food, and even keep 
them open after you have touched them. 
There are other species that will snuggle as close 
as they can to the bottom of the nest, bending 
their bodies in an arc to fit the cup. It some- 
times happens, too, if they are old enough, 
that they will give a loud chirp and spring 
from the nest in a wild panic. Indeed, most 
birds seem to be taught very early by their 
parents that man is a dangerous enemy ; or is 
it only their nature to become frightened at a 
creature so much larger than themselves — one 
that must look to them like a great bugaboo ? 
Who can say ? 

Shall I tell you of some of the pretty nests 
I have found ? One evening I was walking 



46 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

through a clover and timothy field, when a 
meadow lark suddenly bounded up before me. 
There, through the deep grass, wound a path 
several feet long, which led to a nest daintily 
hidden and canopied, containing five or six lark 
babies. The path had been worn by the old 
birds going to and from the nest, for they did 
not seem to alight directly by the side of it, but 
a little distance away, and then crept through 
the grass to the site. Indeed, I have found 
more than one meadow lark's nest by first 
noticing the little roadway trodden by the 
old birds in the grass. In one case this path 
ran under the grass for fully a foot and a 
half, looking like a little old-fashioned covered 
bridge. 

To return to the particular nest of which I 
started out to speak, the youngsters must have 
very recently chipped their shells ; for they 
possessed nothing in the way of clothing but a 
little fuzz. When I took one from the nest and 
held it in my hand it was still too young to hold 
up its head more than a moment at a time. 
Just one week later to the day — almost the 
hour — I again called on the happy family in 
the grass ; and what do you think ? The babies 
had grown so rapidly that every one of them 
leaped with wild chirping from the nest, and 



NESTS AND NESTLINGS. 47 

scuttled away through the grass ; and they were 
all well feathered. 

But the same was true of a brood of bush 
sparrows, whose crib was hidden in the grass at 
the border of the woods. Poor babies ! They 
were without a feather, with scarcely a gossa- 
mer thread of down, stretching up their slender 
necks, which were so weak that they could 
barely lift the head, and opening their mouths 
for food. Even their eyes were not yet open. 
I visited them a couple of days later and found 
them beginning to feather, and too knowing to 
open their mouths when they saw me, seemingly 
aware that their parents were different-looking 
creatures. 

A week later they leaped from the nest and 
fluttered off into the grass, though the youngest 
one could scarcely get over the rim. But hold ! 
What was this ? Here was a baby whose head 
was partly bare, and who was about two-and-a- 
half times as large as the rest of the children of 
the family ! What could this mean ? Why, 
it was a young cow bunting which the little 
mother sparrow had hatched with her own 
bantlings. You are aware, perhaps, that the 
mother bunting — though she is only half a 
mother — slyly drops her eggs into the nests 
of other birds, and leaves them there to be 



48 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

hatched, and even after they go from the nest 
she does not take care of her own toddlers, 
but gives them entirely over into the hands 
of the foster parents. 

Before the little sparrows leaped from the 
nest it was comical to see how they were ar- 
ranged. The frowsy bunting was occupying 
the center of the cup, while his tiny compan- 
ions were ranged around him, partly covering 
him, and thus keeping him snug and warm. 
He was not as far advanced as his tiny fellow- 
infants, and made no attempt to get out of the 
nest, but cuddled down close against the bot- 
tom. When I lifted him out, he drew with 
him by his clinging claws a part of the lining 
of the nest. As the sparrows had a large 
enough family to take care of without this 
strapping youngster, I carried him home and 
adopted him into my own family of pet 
birds. 

In a meadow green and sweet there was a 
red- winged blackbird's nest, placed in a tuft of 
grass. There were but two eggs in it at first. 
As time passed the grass grew taller, thus hid- 
ing the nest more completely and making it 
more cozy. The little birds broke shell at 
about the time of the exit of the young 
meadow larks, perhaps a few days later. But 



NESTS AND NESTLINGS. 49 

mark ! The redwings remained in the nest 
considerably over a week longer than the 
meadow larks. This was another surprise, for 
surely the grown blackbirds are fully as spry 
and intelligent as their fellow-denizens of the 
meadow. 



TEIALS OF A BIED'S LIFE. 

Yes, indeed, birds have their full share of 
"trials and tribulations." Those who are not 
acquainted with their habits would scarcely 
believe from how many sources their troubles 
arise. The truth is, they are never safe, for foes 
are constantly lurking about to harm . them or 
their offspring, so that one often wonders how 
they can ever be as gay and happy as they are. 

Yet they have been wisely endued with 
keen eyes, swift wings, and sharp ears, so that 
it is very difficult to surprise them. They seem 
to espy you afar off as you approach their 
haunts. Go to the woods at any time, sum- 
mer or winter, and as you draw near you will 
hear the alarm call of a half dozen birds, some 
from the remote sylvan depth, spreading the 
news of your approach through the whole 
bird community. It is doubtful if there is a 
feathered citizen of the place which does not 
soon know that there is something unusual 
astir. The chickadee chatters it to the jay, 
the jay to the flycatcher, the flycatcher to the 

50 



TRIALS OF A BIRD'S LIFE. 51 

thrush, and so the rumor spreads until all the 
feathered tenants are apprised of your unwel- 
come presence. 

Much as birds sometimes quarrel among 
themselves, they all seem to be allied against 
their common foes, and give one another the 
alarm at the approach of what they look upon 
as a common danger. I have been trying to 
account for the fact that the cow bunting, 
which spirits its eggs into other birds' nests, is 
tolerated in birdlarid. You seldom see an- 
other bird chasing it about. Perhaps the fol- 
lowing is the reason : No bird is more alert 
for intruders than the bunting as it sits among 
the branches, having no brood-rearing of its 
own to attend to, and no bird gives the alarm 
quicker as one nears its precincts. It seems to 
realize that its own eggs or little ones in some 
other bird's nest are in danger, and so it sounds 
the tocsin to put the foster parents on their 
guard. The bird seems to be as uneasy about 
its children as if it assumed the care of them 
itself. Thus the bunting may not be an un- 
mixed evil in the bird world, after all ; he may 
perform the useful role of sentinel. 

But, in spite of all the natural cunning of 
the birds, many real dangers beset their lives, 
and many sad tragedies occur. A time of 



52 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

general anxiety comes when little ones arrive 
in the nest. During the time of mating and 
nest building there is much music in the bird 
world, the males vying with one another in 
their efforts to sing the finest love songs ; but 
when the more serious business of rearing a 
family is at hand, there is comparatively little 
minstrelsy, first, because the males must help 
to feed the children, and, second, because they 
do not want to betray the secret of the nests. 

How the robins sang in my neighborhood 
in March, April, and May, waking me many a 
morning at break of day with their chimin o* 
choruses ! In June, with family cares demand- 
ing attention, they seldom uttered more than a 
wisp of melody. They went about silently, 
lest their enemies should suspect the presence 
of their nurseries somewhere in the maples. 
You must not think, therefore, that there are 
few birds about in June because you hear so 
little singing. 

Some species make very little ado if you 
find their nest with eggs in it ; but after there 
are little ones, though ever so young and home- 
ly, the old birds will begin to set up a din as 
soon as you go near; and the older the young 
birds are, the more excited their parents be- 
come. The ovenbirds have an odd habit. As 



TRIALS OF A BIRD'S LIFE. 53 

long as the children are in the nest they seem 
to be as indifferent as if there were no infants 
within ten miles; but when the youngsters 
have left the nest and are beginning to flit 
about in the saplings, their parents begin their 
loud chirping as soon as you get within sight 
of them. 

Among many birds this habit prevails. 
You can almost always tell when Madam 
Robin's bairns have taken wing and ventured 
from the nest, for she proclaims the fact to the 
entire community by her loud and nervous 
chirping. Why she does not keep the secret 
to herself is a problem. But the crow black- 
birds, brown thrashers, and catbirds behave in 
the same, inconsistent way. 

The conduct of a pair of parent birds 
when their children have been killed or kid- 
napped is often very pitiful. They grieve for 
days after the disaster, fluttering about and 
calling in tones of distress, and sometimes even 
gathering food for the missing brood, as if 
they still hoped to find them. 

But birds of different species, and even 
those of the same species, act very differently 
when their nestlings are approached. One 
spring I visited the nest of a pair of catbirds 
quite frequently. Usually the catbirds are 



54 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

very uneasy about their little ones, and will 
mew loudly when they suspect the presence of 
danger ; but, to ray surprise, the pair of which 
I speak never once uttered a cry, although I 
took two of their babies from the nest to ex- 
amine them. Several flickers have acted in the 
same way, repressing any outcry of alarm. 

What a pity that there can not be perfect 
harmony in the animal world, and that some 
species must be constantly preying upon others ! 
But so it is, and we can only wonder at the 
mystery of it, and do what we are able to 
lighten the troubles of the innocent. 

I find so many despoiled nests in my ram- 
bles that my enjoyment of bird study is sadly 
marred. One spring I think that over half of 
the nests I discovered were afterward robbed. 
Many, many times, after finding a nest of some 
interesting species, and resolving to watch the 
conduct of the old birds, and be present at the 
flight of the young ones, the very next time I 
called at the little cottage it would be robbed 
of its treasures and torn by ruthless claws. 

Probably the worst enemy of small birds 
is the blue jay, which illustrates the proverb, 
" Handsome is as handsome does " ; for his gay 
holiday attire does not give him a kind and 
honest heart. Having found a nest of eggs, 



TRIALS OF A BIRD'S LIFE. 55 

he thrusts his long, lancelike beak into one of 
them and carries it off to some place where he 
can suck out its contents. If the nest contains 
callow little ones, he will gobble them down, 
cannibal that he is, or carry them one by one 
to his own brood, to cultivate in them a taste 
for bird flesh. 

Of course, other birds are aware of his prey- 
ing habits, and give him battle whenever he 
approaches their nest. He gets many a cuff 
over his head and back from the vireos, pewees, 
and sparrows, which are more dexterous on 
the wing than he. I once saw a wood pewee 
make the feathers fly from the back of a jay 
which was prowling about its premises, and I 
felt like applauding the plucky little David 
for routing the great Goliath. Mr. Burroughs 
thinks that other birds, which suffer at the 
hands of the jay, sometimes take revenge by 
puncturing his eggs, and otherwise bringing 
his expectations to grief. 

It pains me to have to admit that the cat- 
bird, fair-voiced minstrel that he is, sometimes 
becomes a burglar; but John Burroughs ac- 
tually saw one in the act of devouring the eggs 
of the least flycatcher. I have never seen the 
catbird doing anything of the kind, but if Mr. 
Burroughs really saw this cruel deed with his 



56 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

own eyes, no one can deny it. However, I am 
disposed to think that this bird is seldom guilty 
of such vandalism. 

Among the worst enemies of the birds are 
the snakes, which improve every opportunity 
to devour nestlings, some species, especially in 
southern countries, climbing trees for that pur- 
pose. Have you ever seen a pair of song 
sparrows fighting a black snake ? They will 
dart at him with quivering wings, giving him 
a sharp stroke w T ith their bills and claws, 
while he will spring at them with open mouth 
and try to catch them. They usually are too 
quick for him, dodging aw T ay just in time to 
escape his fangs. Sometimes, while he bounds 
after one bird, the other dashes at him from 
the rear. But doubtless if he finds the nest, 
he will rob it in spite of their efforts to drive 
him away. 

Of course, the owls molest the smaller birds 
a great deal, for they steal upon them una- 
wares by night and clutch them with their 
talons. It is thought that some of the owls 
reach into woodpecker holes with their claws 
and fish out the young if the nest is not 
too deep. An owl was once found dead in 
such a cavity, w T here it had clutched a wood- 
pecker with its claws and then had got fast, 




A fight for home. 



58 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

its victim being also dead. Many birds, as I 
have often proved by prowling about at night, 
roost in thick thorn bushes and brush heaps, 
where they are safe from owlish attacks. 

But to my mind the most ruthless nest 
robber is the human one, commonly called a 
" collector " — that is, a man who makes a 
business of collecting birds' eggs for lucre's 
sake. If he would collect only for museums, 
and then only a few eggs of each species, it 
would not be so sad; but he often gathers 
large numbers of eggs — as many as he can find, 
in fact — and tries to dispose of them to private 
individuals and mere curiosity hunters. I do 
not see how any person can look upon these 
" clutches," as they are called, as pretty orna- 
ments, especially when one remembers the 
heartaches of the little birds whose nests have 
been plundered. 

The human collector knows better, because 
he is endowed with reason and conscience, and 
so I blame him more than I do the birds and 
animals that ravish nests for food, for that is 
part of their nature. Far be it from me to say 
a harsh word about any one, but for my part, if 
I should rob an innocent bird's nest merely for 
sport or gain, I should feel that I was little 
better than a burglar. 



OITK SWEETEST SONGSTEES. 

A bied's attire has little to do with his 
song — unless it might be said that, as a rule, 
the more plainly dressed birds are the sweetest 
songsters. Look at that modest little minstrel, 
the song sparrow, not observed by one person 
out of a hundred, and scarcely known from the 
English sparrow even by the majority of our 
country people, and yet what matchless sweet- 
ness bubbles from his tuneful throat ! The 
brown thrasher and mocking bird are disap- 
pointing at first blush on account of the com- 
monplaceness of their appearance, and must be 
heard, rather than seen, to be appreciated. 

The like may be said of the little Euro- 
pean bird of the poets, the skylark. Many a 
poet, like Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth, 
has woven a garland of verse about this won- 
derful bird. Do you desire to learn some- 
thing about this songster's habits? High in 
the air as these birds soar when they sing, 
their nests are built on the ground in a tuft of 

59 



60 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

flowers or grass. The old birds approach the 
nest very stealthily, but when the mother has 
once seated herself upon it she may often 
be caught with the hand, so loath is she to 
leave. The eggs, usually four or five in 
number, are of a grayish color, speckled with 
brown. 

Curious as it may seem, the lark does not 
perch on a limb, but, when not on the wing, 
walks on the bare ground or through the long 
grass. Each pair of birds, if not unfortunate, 
will raise several broods in a single season. 
As is the case with the pheasants, grouse, and 
partridges, the young leave their birthplace 
very soon after they are hatched, but their 
manners just at that period of their lives are 
not well known. 

Are you aware that the skylark makes a 
very fine cage bird? Except the canaries, 
there is perhaps no bird so greatly esteemed in 
Europe as a pet, many a poor family that can 
afford no other luxury having one of these 
merry minstrels in a cage. It is very hardy, 
and is, therefore, easily kept in confinement, 
living on insects, seeds, and vegetables, and 
seldom being troubled with sickness of any 
kind. A five-dollar bill will buy one of these 
delightful pets, if sent to the well-known bird 



OUR SWEETEST SONGSTERS. 61 

dealer, George H. Holden, 240 Sixth Avenue, 
New York. 

This lark is happy in all kinds of weather, 
and sjngs in his cage all the year round except 
during the molting season. He will pace 
from one end of the cage to the other, his 
head erect, his wings fluttering, and pour forth 
his song as if a perfect ecstasy had seized him. 
But his cage must have a cover of some kind 
over the top, for he naturally wants to rise 
when he sings, as he does from his native 
heath, and if the top is unshaded he is apt to 
dash against the wires and injure himself. He 
may be taken from the nest w^hen young and 
reared by hand, and it is said that birds so 
brought up make the best pets, becoming 
very tame. 

This wonderful bird, if put in a room 
where there are other birds, will really learn 
their songs. That of the nightingale, for in- 
stance, he mimics to perfection. He and his 
mate will also rear a brood in a cage if given 
a quantity of grass and hair with which to con- 
struct a nest. At such times they require 
special care. 

But I suppose if you want to hear the song 
of this " scorner of the ground " at its best, 
you should be out in the fields on some bright 



62 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

May morning in England, when you would see 
him rise from the grass, beginning to sing a 
blithe song, which becomes more beautiful as 
he ascends, until finally he seems only a speck 
in the sky, from which a deluge of melody de- 
scends to the earth. Then he sweeps down- 
ward, closing his song only when he has reached 
the ground. It is a w T onderful performance. 
No wonder it is said that he " haunts the sky ! " 
No wonder the poets have gone into rhapsodies 
over his welkin song ! It would be difficult to 
give a description of the minstrelsy. It is 
made up of a variety of sweet notes which, are 
uttered in quick succession, the bird keeping 
time by the vibrations of its wings. 

It has often been said that America has no 
bird whose song will compare with that of the 
English skylark as it rises far up into the ether. 
Of course no one wants to say a disparaging 
word about the British bird, and as to the 
quality of his song in comparison with the 
music of some of our own birds I am unable 
to say anything. But, be that as it may, there 
are birds in America which mount far up 
almost, if not quite, beyond the reach of the 
eye, and sing with a haunting sweetness. 
Shall I tell you about one of these birds ? Its 
proper name is Sprague's pipit, although it is 




European skylark. 



64 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

sometimes called the Missouri skylark or tit- 
lark ; but it seems that the name titlark, once 
applied to several species of birds, is now aban- 
doned, and " pipit n is being used. The bird 
of which I speak dwells on the prairies and 
plains of our Middle States, breeding from 
Central Dakota and Minnesota nortlrward. 
There are those who contend that its song is 
not inferior to that of the far-famed European 
skylark. 

A writer in Minnesota gives a thrilling ac- 
count of an occasion on which he heard the 
aerial song and witnessed the upward flight of 
this bird. He was riding along a country road 
with a friend, when he saw a bird spring from 
the grass within a few feet of his horse. It 
flew a hundred feet away with a succession of 
flits of the wings which lifted it perhaps 
twenty feet into the air, then it turned and 
flew back toward him in the same w r ay, again 
mounting up about the same distance as before. 
At that point it began to sing with great power, 
and thus it climbed upward, upward, swinging 
back and forth, until it finally vanished w^holly 
from sight in the blue ether; then the observ- 
er used his field glass, a powerful one, and 
watched the upward vaulting of the blithe min- 
strel, which kept up its singing all the while. 



OUK SWEETEST SONGSTERS. 65 

Suddenly the song ceased, the bird closed its 
wings, and plunged head downward like an 
arrow, only opening its wings when within a 
yard of the ground, and alighting almost at 
the point from which it had risen. 

The writer says that a description of the 
song would be difficult, but he gives some idea 
of it by adding that it consists of a succession 
of notes, beginning at a high pitch, warbled in 
a diminishing strain, that is very pleasing and 
melodious indeed. Certainly this pipit of our 
prairies behaves much like the celebrated sky- 
lark of " ye olden countrie." 

But — would you believe it ? — there is an- 
other bird on the prairies of the West which 
seems to . vie with the skylark in aerial song. 
It is called the prairie horned lark. The writer 
to whom I have just referred has given a de- 
scription of this bird's flight and vocal perform- 
ance. ' He once saw a male leap about ten feet 
from the ground and burst into song. The 
writer says he poured forth such a volume of 
melody that it seemed he should have burst if 
he had closed his mouth for a moment. Then 
the bird turned abruptly to the right, sailing 
away about fifty yards, when he suddenly 
wheeled with a rapid flutter of the wings that 
lifted him thirty feet or more, after which he 



66 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

swung back a hundred yards at least, and then 
mounted upward again, thus gyrating back and 
forth, springing upward and singing without a 
pause for breath. The song grew fainter, and 
sweeter, if possible, every moment. After 
reaching a height beyond the ken of the un- 
aided eye, the vocalist and athlete closed his 
wings and dived straight downward to the 
ground with a velocity that made the observer's 
head swim. Yet the bird touched the grass al- 
most as lightly as a snowflake. 

Thus it would seem that we have at least 
two birds in America w r hich haunt the sky 
when they sing, and disdain the ground. Some 
time the poets will rhyme about them as Shel- 
ley and Wordsworth rhymed about the skylark. 

But we have other birds that sing while on 
the wing, although they do not vault very 
high into the air. Many times I have seen 
that " bonny bit of blue," the indigo bird, dart 
lightly out on the upbuoying ether, and while 
poising on the wing, chatter his most rollicksome 
lay. I have seen the Maryland yellow throat 
perform a similar feat, at least a half dozen 
times. The bobolink does most of his singing 
while circling in the air, but he does not mount 
up, up beyond the sight, as does the skylark, 
and as a hack writer on birds declared some 



OUR SWEETEST SONGSTERS. 67 

time ago ; he seldom flies higher than an ordi- 
nary treetop, generally not so high, when he 
sings. Yet one spring I heard several bobo- 
links singing at about three times that height, 
but they were flying straight across the sky and 
not mounting upward. It seemed as if they 
had just come from some other part of the 
country, and were announcing their arrival with 
a burst of melody. 

When the song sparrow becomes especially 
joyous he, too, will spring out from a branch or 
even up from the ground, and trill at the top 
of his voice. The meadow lark often falls into 
a lyrical transport and sings on the wing, though 
at such times he does not pipe his ordinary 
" Cheer ! , cheer ! " but pours forth a wild med- 
ley that makes the welkin ring. 

Here is a curious fact about these aerial 
vocalists : they are all birds that nest on the 
ground or in low bushes, and that spend a large 
part of their time there, and they almost always 
spring from the ground or a low perch into the 
air. Although there may be exceptions, I do 
not recall a single treetop lilter that indulges 
in such vocal gambols. 



THE FUNNY LITTLE OWL. 

The loud chirping of a robin attracted my 
notice one day soon after I entered my en- 
chanted woodland. 

" She has little ones somewhere in the sap- 
lings or bushes/' I thought, "and takes -me for 
a kidnapper." 

But the robin racket being kept up even 
after I had gone farther away, I went back to 
see what might be its cause. The distressed 
mother bird was flitting about in the saplings, 
and presently swung down toward an old 
stump. Ah ! there it was, the object of her 
wrath and fear — a little screech owl, standing 
as straight as a major on the top of the stump. 
His face was turned toward me, and looking at 
him with my glass, I could see that his yellow 
eyes were wide open. His small size as well as 
his awkward manner proclaimed him a young- 
ster — quite well fledged, it is true, but from the 
nest only a short time. 

Madam Robin seemed to grow bolder. It 



THE FUNNY LITTLE OWL. 



69 




Robin and owl. 



was amusing to 
see how nervous 
and uneasy she 
became. Again 
and again she 
made a fierce dash 
at the little owl, 
almost striking 
his head, so that 
he must have 
felt the wind of 
her wings ; but, 
strange to say, he 
never dodged, or 
even moved a 
feather or a mus- 



70 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

cle. Every time she swooped down toward 
him she uttered a loud, angry cry. Why was 
the little fellow so indifferent to the assaults 
of the robin, while he kept his face turned 
toward nie, standing four or five rods away ? 

After enjoying the fun a while (it was fun 
for me, at least) I slowly drew nearer. Master 
Owl glared and stared, but did not move until 
I almost touched him with my cane ; then he 
uttered a scornful hiss, spread his wings, and 
tried to fly away, but tumbled helplessly, like a 
loose bunch of gray feathers, to the ground, al- 
most rolling head over claw^s. When I got 
close to him again he snapped his bill at me, 
and muttered something in an angry undertone. 

Suddenly there was a wicked snapping of 
mandibles and a wrathful mumbling above me 
in one of the trees. It was the mother owl, 
who would have been only too glad to swoop 
upon me and tear out ray eyes, had not the 
bright daylight blinded her. As it was, she 
could do nothing but grind her beak and tread 
her perch in helpless rage. 

Seeing she could not hurt me, I gave my 
attention to her interesting infant. He opened 
his little mouth, so humanlike, and muttered, 
and seemed to be ready to defend himself ; yet 
w r hen I put my cane to his mandibles he did 



THE FUNNY LITTLE OWL. 71 

not seize it angrily, as I supposed lie would do. 
At length I caught him around the back and 
wings with my hand. He did not offer to bite 
or scratch, but gave himself up at once, as if 
admitting that he was in my power, and might 
as well not struggle. As I gazed into his face 
and half-closed eyes he looked very human, and 
I could not help talking to him as if he were 
a real human being. 

I bore him off some distance and placed 
him on the top of a pile of cord wood, and then 
went back to see what the old bird was doing. 
Two robins, an oriole, and an indigo bird were 
flitting and chirping about her, but none of 
them had the courage to make a direct attack. 
They chattered and scolded and blustered, but 
still they were cowards at heart, and the owl 
did not mind their hurly-burly. 

Many people rail at the blue jay because he 
robs birds' nests ; but he is of some use, after 
all, as I learned on that day. In the midst of 
the hubbub a jay came ambling upon the scene, 
swinging lightly from tree to tree and branch 
to branch, and moving directly toward the owl. 
He never paused nor hesitated for a moment. 
The owl spied him when he came near, and bent 
clear back on her perch to dodge him, although 
she had paid no heed at all to the other birds. 



72 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

Captain Jay, without a quiver of fear or a 
moment's faltering, dashed against her and 
knocked her off her perch. She scrambled to 
another branch, when he swung around and 
struck her again. The third time he knocked 
her from her perch she took to wing and flew 
away, and then there were peace and quiet in 
the place. I can not help thinking of the brave, 
masterly conduct of the jay, and his coming 
upon the scene of contest at the opportune mo- 
ment reminds one of Sheridan's famous ride 
and other timely deeds of bravery. 

On going back to the wood pile where the 
baby owl had been placed, I found that he had 
disappeared ; but presently I caught sight of 
him hulking along on the ground among the 
bushes not far away. He allowed me to stroke 
his back without protest, but when I playfully 
shook him a little roughly, he snapped his 
beak and growled. I stepped away a rod or 
more and watched him. He glared in my 
direction and seemed to hear the least sound I 
made, swaying to and fro and uttering a com- 
plaining mew. Again I approached him, when 
he fluffed up his feathers, making himself 
almost double his natural size, spread out his 
wings, swayed his head and body from side to 
side, and snapped and scolded. Yet, when I 



THE FUNNY LITTLE OWL. 73 

took him up in my hand, he submitted tamely, 
sitting in my palm as if it were the most 
natural perch in the world for a juvenile owl. 

How well do you suppose a young owl 
can see in the daytime ? This one could see 
an object near his face, at least in a shadowy 
way; for, whenever I lifted my hand toward 
him, he would fix it with his glaring eyes, 
turning his head from side to side or throwing 
it back, according to the position of the hand. 
I lifted him to the crotch of a small bush. 
There he lay, pillowing his head on one of the 
twigs, and closing his eyes like an innocent 
child. Indeed, he seemed so pretty and trust- 
ful as he lay there, pretending to go to sleep, 
that I almost fell in love with him and longed 
to have him for a pet. He permitted me to 
stroke his downy head and back, but kept 
furtive watch out of the narrow chinks be- 
tween' his eyelids, through which I could see 
the gleam of his golden orbs. 

He was learning the lessons of owl habit 
very early, for his beak was stained with 
blood. His parents had been feeding him on 
mice and small birds. Innocent as he ap- 
peared, he would have bitten me had I given 
him half a chance. Once I ventured to put 
my finger to his mouth as he opened it, when 



74 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

he seized it and gave me a well-deserved 
pinch. His neck got quite a sudden twist 
w r hen I jerked my finger away. I prefer to 
keep my fingers out of owls' mouths, don't 
you? 

Taking my station about five rods away, 
I put his sense of sight and hearing to the 
test. If I quietly moved my hand to and fro, 
or brandished xny cane, he did not turn his 
head in my direction, proving that he could 
not see me at that distance ; but the slightest 
noise I made attracted his attention, so that 
his hearing must have been very acute. 

By the way, have you ever noticed an 
owl's mouth ? When opened, it looks pre- 
cisely as if the bird were smiling broadly and 
pleasantly — somewhat like a clown in a circus. 
It does not look in the least savage or cruel. 
" Enough to make an owl laugh " is a saying 
that must have come into vogue because that 
fowl really seems to laugh when he opens his 
broad mouth. As to my owlet in the w^oods, 
the last I saw of him he had toppled from the 
bush and was flopping along on the ground, 
stopping now and then to stare about and 
listen, to make sure that no enemy was on 
his track. 



BIEDS AT A SUMMEE EESOET. 

They were delightfully numerous — the 
birds met with at a pleasant summer resort 
in northern Indiana. We — that is, some 
friends and myself — were living for a few 
weeks in a tent placed beneath the shade 
trees ; and thus we dwelt right among the 
birds, which caroled gayly around us and 
woke us early from our morning slumbers. 
Although it was the latter part of July, some 
species were almost as songful as in May and 
June. This was especially true of the song 
sparrows, which trilled their roundels in the 
trees ^bout the tent and in the arbor and 
bushes that circled the pond a few paces away. 

For many years I had been listening to 
these delightful lowland trillers, and yet that 
summer they sang some new tunes that were 
enchanting. One day one of these songsters, 
perched in a sapling, broke into a run that 
bubbled up from his throat in a tremulous 
tone, as if he had taken a little water into his 
windpipe and were gurgling it. I said to my 

75 



76 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

friends, " That goes ahead of the famous so- 
pranoist who has been singing so charmingly in 
the auditorium, doesn't it ? " And I am sure 
it did. If you bend your ear on the trills of 
the song sparrow, and try to analyze his tones, 
you will agree with me that no human voice 
could produce anything so fine. 

Our tenting place was near a beautiful 
lake along whose bush-and -reed-fringed shores 
I often strolled, and everywhere the song spar- 
rows were in tune. While some of them were 
familiar, coming near our tent, singing blithely 
and helping themselves to crumbs thrown 
upon the ground, others were found in the 
wildest marshes and thickets along the border 
of the lake. You see, some of them were dis- 
posed to be sociable, while others preferred 
seclusion. I hope my readers, young and old 
alike, are on familiar terms with the song spar- 
row, which is a brown little bird w^ith a speck- 
led bosom and a large dusky spot on the 
center of his chest. You will find him mostly 
about low and damp places, although he some- 
times ventures to take up residence in higher 
localities, especially if there are springs and 
running streams. 

Among the most familiar birds that came 
around our tent were the purple grackles or 



BIRDS AT A SUMMER RESORT. 7? 

crow blackbirds. They were constantly on 
the alert for pieces of bread and cake flung on 
the ground by the campers or the picnickers 
who came now and then to this resort on 
pleasure bent. Sometimes a company of these 
sable epicures would alight on the ground and 
proceed to dispose of a large piece of bread. 
Then there would be a wrangle in the black- 
bird household. Usually one of them seemed 
to be " boss." He would take his stand near 
the disputed prize, peck chunks from it, and 
swallow them greedily, dashing at intervals at 
one of his companions who ventured too close. 
Sometimes another grackle would come swoop- 
ing down through the trees and make a de- 
termined spring at the arrogant feaster. Then 
would follow a scrimmage, the twT> birds dash- 
ing together and flying up into the air, claw- 
ing and pecking, until one or the other would 
beat a prudent retreat. 

Once a blue jay came near, and I won- 
dered if he would prove himself a match for 
the ebon revelers, but he was driven away 
every time he became too bold. The grackles 
are interesting birds. Have you ever noticed 
how stately their bearing is as they strut about 
on the ground, holding their heads erect, as 
much as to say, " Don't you think us fit to be 



78 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

kings of the realm ? " At a little distance 
their eyes look white, but if you can get close 
to them you will find that the iris is golden 
yellow. 

Robins, red-headed woodpeckers, and w r hite- 
breasted nuthatches were almost as much at 
home about our tent as the crow blackbirds, 
and one morning a handsome rose-breasted 
grossbeak flitted about in the trees near by. 
He was not shy, but displayed his rosy breast- 
plate to the best advantage, inviting my ad- 
miration. 

Do you know the Maryland yellowthroat ? 
He is a dainty warbler who wears a pretty 
olive coat, a bright-yellow necktie, and a black 
mask instead of a hat or a cap. You will 
find him in damp, bushy places. The yellow- 
throats were very plentiful along the swampy 
shores of the lake, and, in spite of the late- 
ness of the season, were just as lavish of their 
music as I have ever known them to be. 
There is no mistaking their rolling, swinging 
ditties when once you have heard them, for 
they are unlike any other warbler's trills. 
HoV loudly they ring up from the rushes and 
reeds, swinging back and forth like lyrical in- 
cense ! 

Few other warblers are more abundant 







than these pretty 
vocalists. In the 
spring of that 
year I had spent 
a month in Loui- 
siana, Mississip- 
pi, and other 
Southern States, 
and in the 
dank, quak- 
ing marshes, 
along the 
streams, 
and in 






^va 



Maryland yellowthroats. 



80 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

the mountain ravines I encountered these 
pert, half-shy, half-familiar little trillers. Up 
from the densely matted thickets of the bog- 
lands their wavering ditties came like silvery 
threads of sound. In northern Alabama and 
southern Tennessee they were just as mu- 
sical, and when I reached my home in Ohio 
there was no dearth of Maryland yellowthroats. 
Think of the range of these tiny travelers ! 

One day I took a long stroll along the 
border of the lake. In a dense, bushy place 
a lively trill reached my ear, the musician 
turning out to be that little nugget of gold, 
the summer warbler. His entire plumage is 
yellow, save that his breast and sides are faintly 
streaked with reddish brown. He is so dainty 
a birdlet that you are tempted to call him a 
sylph. While I watched one of these war- 
blers which was flitting about in a small tree, 
he espied a worm clinging to the under side of 
a leaf. The problem with him seemed to be, 
how to secure that insect. There were no 
twigs beneath on which he could stand. Of 
course, he might have clung back downward 
to the leaf, as warblers often do ; but then I 
was standing directly below him, and he could 
not bring himself to turn his back upon so 
dangerous a being even for a moment, for in 



BIRDS AT A SUMMER RESORT. 81 

that moment what might not occur ? How he 
scuttled about from twig to twig, and peered, 
and chirped, and craned out his neck, and 
tried to invent a plan to capture his prize ! At 
length he found a twig from which he could, 
by a supreme effort, reach the coveted worm. 
Out went his head and beak along the under 
surface of the leaf. He could just reach the 
worm. He pecked it with his dainty bill and 
held it for a moment, but his hold was too 
meager ; the worm squirmed from between his 
mandibles and toppled to the ground at my 
feet. It was too bad that birdie had to lose 
his breakfast, and he gave vent to his impa- 
tience by chirping and scolding. 

That, ramble brought me a very agreeable 
surprise. In a deep, cool hollow, through 
which a crystal brook purled, I espied a 
warbler whose markings were new to me. 
Its throat was black, its other under parts 
and its crown yellow, and its general color 
bluish ash or gray. Well, was I really to 
have a find ? My opera glass revealed an- 
other marking — a bright yellow spot on each 
wing ! Ah ! I knew the little stranger in an 
instant. It was the golden-winged warbler, a 
bird that I had seen but once before, and then 
he had been so shy that I had caught only 



82 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

provoking glimpses of liim. But to-day my 
little enchanter permitted me to see him plain- 
ly as he flitted about in the low trees. He 
was a handsome fellow, a genuine Beau Brum- 
niel, and I felt very proud of my find. 

But here was another bright gem in feath- 
ers. Can you pronounce his name? It was 
the prothonotary warbler — whole head and 
neck bright yellow, back olive-green, wings 
and tail ash-blue. This was not the first time 
I had seen this species ; where do you suppose 
I saw my first prothonotary ? Away down in 
Louisiana in a boggy woodland several miles 
from the city of New Orleans, south of the 
Mississippi River. There is reason to believe 
that these two rare feathered mites breed in 
the neighborhood of the summer resort. You 
must look for the nest of the prothonotary 
in holes of stumps and snags about swampy 
places. 

I must tell you about the most exciting 
discovery of my summer outing. Several of 
us were rowing across the lake one quiet even- 
ing, when, as we approached the opposite 
shore, we were greeted by a tremulous little 
trill. I pushed for the shore as rapidly as I 
could, and soon heard the scolding chatter of 
two little birds in the deep grass, now and 



BIRDS AT A SUMMER RESORT. 83 

then varied by the quaint trills just heard. 
They were marsh wrens — the little chatter- 
boxes. For half an hour I watched and list- 
ened* and then ventured to wade out into the 
deep grass a few yards, the birds scolding still 
more loudly. 

What was this little green ball in the top 
of the grass directly before me ? I bent over 
to examine it more closely. A nest ! Yes, a 
marsh wren's nest, the first I had ever found. 
And what kind of a structure do you suppose it 
was ? A ball about six inches in diameter, the 
green grass blades above being bent down and 
deftly spun over the top, so that the dry grass 
could be seen only by close inspection. And 
the ball was hollow, though the walls were 
quite thick. Where would you have looked 
for the door to the cozy bedroom within ? 
It was at the side — a small round hole just 
large enough to admit the bird's body, partly 
screened by grass stems. 

It was, I think, the most cunning nest I 
have ever found. How cozily the little madam 
could sit within on her eggs ! Then the top 
was so covered with the green grass that 
it was completely disguised from keen-eyed 
hawks that may have circled overhead looking 
for quarry. It was only by an accident that I 



84 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

espied it. It was a new nest, containing neither 
eggs nor nestlings, proving that the marsh 
wrens breed rather late in the season. One 
would naturally expect these quaint birds to 
behave in an odd way. 




THE 

MERRY BOBOLINK. 

Now, boys and 
girls, we are going 
to talk about a 
charmer — tlie merry 
bobolink. Come 
out to the meadow 
or the clover 
field and I 
will show 
him to 
you. He 
is that 
handsome 
bird whose back is white like a 
miniature snowdrift, his hind neck light yel- 
lowish or buff, and the rest of his plumage 
glossy black. You can not mistake him for 

85 



M* 






86 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

any other bird when he wears his wedding 
suit, for he is just like himself and not like 
any of his fellow-tenants of the meadow. 

But you may know him in another way. 
No other bird is so fond of rehearsing his song 
on the wing. His usual method is to start up 
into the air from the grass or a fence stake, fly 
across the meadow, or circle around several 
times, and finally settle down gracefully into 
the grass again, singing all the while in rich 
and varied tones that bubble up from his 
throbbing bosom. 

His song, you will notice, is rich and varied, 
the notes leaping and racing from his throat 
as if each were trying to reach the outdoors 
before the other. His voice has a kind of 
metallic ring, as if several small silver bells 
were pealing in his throat ; at the same time 
his tones come out in a sort of gurgle, making 
you think that he must carry water in his 
throat. One of the runs of his song which 
occurs frequently sounds very much like the 
word " bobolink,' 7 from which he gets his name, 
and a jingling name it is. 

Washington Irving has written a most 
charming article on the bobolink, which some 
of you may have read in your school readers. 
Our meiTy minstrel's mate looks very different 



THE MERRY BOBOLINK. 87 

from himself, being dressed in a plain yellow- 
ish-brown suit. For that reason Bryant calls 
her " Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife." You 
never would suppose that she was the wife of 
so gallant and gayly-dressed a husband if you 
did not see them in each other's company. 
She is modest and quiet, hiding her nest in 
the grass, often so cozily that it is difficult to 
find. How do you suppose I have contrived to 
discover the nest of this bird ? In this way : 

In breeding time I conceal myself in the 
bushes or tall grass at the border of the mead- 
ow where I can overlook the whole grassy 
place. Then when I see a female flitting about, 
looking for food or preening her feathers, I 
watch her closely, until at length she flies 
down into the grass. Keeping my eye on the 
spot, I make a bee line for it, and usually suc- 
ceed in starting her up from the nest near the 
place 'into which she has dropped. It often re- 
quires a good deal of patience to do this, as 
the bird will refuse to go to her nest for a 
long while. Then sometimes she will drop 
into the grass at various points, and when you 
steal up to the spot, there is no nest to be 
found. She frequently alights at one spot, and 
then creeps through the grass out of sight to 
the place some distance away where her nest 



88 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

is hidden. Thus, you perceive, hunting bobo- 
links' nests is not so easy a task, especially be- 
neath a broiling sun. 

A pretty picture is a male bobolink wad- 
ing through and climbing over the deep clover 
when it is in bloom, his white and black trim- 
mings contrasting sharply with the green and 
red of the grass. Sometimes he will stand on 
the top of a tuft of clover, revealing his entire 
form; then he will sink completely out of 
sight for a few moments, and presently re- 
appear, perhaps showing only the white of his 
back and the buff of his nape. 

As the season advances bobolink becomes 
less musical ; there are little ones in the nest 
which he must help to feed and protect, for 
he is not so fine a gentleman that he will not 
work. When the young birds are out of the 
nest and the time approaches for leaving their 
summer home, the entire colony of bobolinks 
will gather in a flock and wheel around over 
the fields, taking flying exercises, and then, be- 
fore one is aware, they have suddenly dis- 
appeared, going to the reedy swamps and rice- 
fields of the South. Mr. Bobolink lays aside 
his gay wedding suit and puts on a coat that 
is almost like that of his plain brown mate. 



A LOWLAND TRILLER. 

Two birds especially are to blame — bless 
them for it ! — for my ardor in the study of 
feathered people — the song sparrow and the 
goldfinch. It was a good many years ago — 
more than I care to tell — when, one day of 
spring, while reading a book by a delightful 
author on Nature and birds, I became so ex- 
cited over the field that seemed to open sud- 
denly before me, that I could not remain in- 
doors, but rushed out to learn what I could 
see with my own eyes. 

In the maples along the streets the gold- 
finches were singing their childlike lays. How 
beautiful they were ! And yet I had probably 
often heard them before without even a thought 
of their sweetness. But a still greater surprise 
was in store for me. A broad, winding river, 
whose banks were embroidered with bushes 
and trees, flowed past the town only a block 
from my house, and thither I hurried. What 
were those rapturous trills that came up from 
the bushes on the banks on both sides of the 

8 89 



90 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

river ? Some of them were so sweet and sad 
that the old longing to be a boy again, free 
from care and anxiety, seized me in its grip. 
I had never before heard music that went so 
deep into my soul. 

But at the time I could not discover the 
name of the singers, so ignorant was I of birds, 
and it was some time afterward — months, if I 
remember correctly — before I knew that the 
song sparrows were the trillers that had stirred 
such a sudden and intense love for birds in 
my heart. That was the day of my awaken- 
ing, my new birth. Before that I had been 
asleep, so far as the birds were concerned. 
With some trouble I procured a bird manual 
and began my avian studies in earnest, and 
ever since they have been a source of unfailing 
delight. 

My own ignorance seems to be shared by 
many others. I am reminded of an incident 
that illustrates this fact. One day in autumn, 
while walking with an old farmer friend across 
the small hollow that lay between his house 
and barn, I called his attention to the pleasing 
trills of the song sparrows. His reply was 
that every one of these birds ought to be 
killed ; that it had been a great blunder to in- 
troduce them into this country ; that they were 



A LOWLAND TRILLER. 91 

a " great nuisance." Of course I had to cor- 
rect his ornithology by telling him that the 
sweet minstrels were American birds and quite 
distinct from the English sparrows which he 
w T as berating. 

His ignorance of the bird life around him 
gave me food for reflection. He had been liv- 
ing at this old homestead for at least half a 
century. During all that time the song spar- 
rows had been trilling merrily about the house 
and in the meadows of his broad farm, and yet 
he had never learned to distinguish them from 
that ill-mannered foreigner, the English spar- 
row. Verily, as the Scripture says, there are 
persons who, " having eyes, see not." It is 
time that, we Americans were learning that we 
have native sparrows and that they are very 
charming birds. Among them none are more 
captivating than our versatile song sparrow. 

Yes, it was the mottle-breasted little triller 
of our lowlands that had as much to do with 
making me a bird lover as anything else. I 
am greatly in his debt. I make my bow to 
the song sparrow, and never tire of his trills. 

You will find his dwellings in marshes, 
along streams, and in low grounds. He seems 
to be especially fond of damp places, and you 
may often see him hopping along the margin 



92 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

of the stream like a sandpiper, or creeping 
about somewhat like a mouse under the grasses 
and weeds. In level countries almost every 
low place where a little water flows in wet 
weather is sure to have a pair or two of these 
merry songsters. 

Their nests are usually built in a tuft of 
grass on the ground, sometimes hidden quite 
cozily, and at other times more or less ex- 
posed. From four to six eggs are laid. Very 
often, when you approach the marsh or low- 
land where their nests are, the males will be- 
gin to sing their gayest tunes, perhaps to at- 
tract your attention from the grassy cottages 
to themselves, or to make you believe that 
birds which are so happy could have no nests 
near by to be uneasy about. But if you go 
too close, their songs will be turned into hoarse 
little chirps that express a good deal of anger 
and alarm. 

The entire breast of this sparrow is mot- 
tled with dusky spots, and in the center of 
the chest there is a large dark blotch, by which 
you may readily tell the song sparrow from his 
cousin, the grass finch, a bird of about the same 
size, which Mr. Burroughs calls u the poet of 
our upland pastures." There are many species 
of the sparrow family, and you should learn to 



A LOWLAND TRILLER. 93 

know them apart at sight. At first they may 
look almost alike to you, but by and by you 
will have no trouble in distinguishing them. 

In one respect the song sparrow differs 
from nearly all his relatives, most of whom 
have one trill which they repeat at intervals, 
only now and then varying it a little ; but our 
lowland musician sings a large number of 
tunes, some twenty or more, with an ease and 
skill that are delightful. Some of them are 
soft and low, as if intended for the ears of 
his mate or nestlings alone ; others are pitched 
to so high a key that the sound goes echoing 
across the marsh like a bugle ; some are very 
mournful, coming, it would seem, from a broken 
heart ; while others are so gay and rollicking 
that you fancy the singer must have fallen heir 
to a fortune. 

Thus it would seem that the song sparrow 
revels in variety ; he disdains humdrum above 
all else. Nothing is more foreign to his taste 
than a musical rut, and you never can be sure 
when you have reached the end of his rep&r* 
toire. After discoursing in one strain for 
awhile, he will turn to another with as much 
grace and skill as a prima donna who wins an 
encore. 

Sometimes when I go out to the swamp 



94 NEWS FEOM THE BIRDS. 

where lie loves to dwell, lie will flit to a perch 
on a bush or sapling and regale me with an 
exquisite solo for a minute ; then he will prob- 
ably turn around on the same twig and chant 
another lay. Presently he will swing himself 
to a higher perch and break out into a third 
and louder strain that throbs across the marsh. 
As if this were not enough, he will drop down 
into the copse out of sight and sing a soft, pen- 
sive lullaby or madrigal, so tender, so ravish- 
ing, that one almost fancies it must come from 
dreamland. I have often heard him trill from 
four to six variations within ten or fifteen 
minutes. 

His arias are composed of somewdiat pro- 
longed notes and rapid runs. Sometimes he 
opens with a trill and closes w r ith several long 
syllables. More frequently this order is re- 
versed. He often begins with one, two, or 
three long notes, then follows with an exqui- 
site trill, and makes a climax by closing with 
a loud, long-drawn syllable. The long notes 
sometimes come near the middle of his song. 
The fact is, the position of the various parts of 
his carols is constantly shifted, according to the 
mood of the happy little minstrel. 

Nor must it be supposed that these notes and 
trills are the same in key and quality of tone. 



A LOWLAND TRTLLER. 95 

Far from it. The trills are soft and low, loud 
and clear, sometimes even harsh and broken, 
more frequently exceedingly sweet, cheery, or 
plaintive, as the bird chooses. The long notes 
are often loud and swelling, making an en- 
chanting crescendo, and then they become sub- 
dued and die away in a cadence of chastened 
sweetness. Seldom are two songs delivered in 
precisely the same key. 

Yet there is something about our minstrel's 
songs that always marks them for his own. 
You never mistake any of his score or more of 
trills, varied as they are, for the song of any 
other bird. He never borrows a tune from 
his neighbors, but always sings his own com- 
positions. He is an original little fellow, you 
see. Never does he make the mistake of trill- 
ing the run of the grass finch, the chippy, or 
the bush sparrow. Shall we call him the Mo- 
zart of the sparrow chorus ? No bird deserves 
it more, for he will sing all the year round in 
any latitude, if the weather is not too cold. 
Often I have heard him in January, February, 
and March, even when there were flakes of snow 
flying in the air. The best singing I ever heard 
him do was in February, during a spell of sum- 
mery weather. But when the extremely hot 
weather of July and August is at hand, silenc- 



96 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

ing nearly all other songsters of field and wood, 
this blithe little speckle-breast tells the story 
of his constant good temper by trilling his 
most cheerful strains. 

My monograph would not be complete 
without the recital of my observations on this 
winsome bird during a recent winter and 
spring. The winter had been unusually rigor- 
ous, driving the sparrows into a more cordial 
climate for a couple of months. In the first 
week of February the weather turned quite 
bland, and then the little lyrists came back in 
full force. How they sang ! Concert followed 
concert in celebration of their return to the old 
home. At first they seemed to be a little out 
of tune, but soon their voices regained their 
wonted power, and I never heard them sing 
more gleefully. It was indeed a song carni- 
val. On pleasant days they almost split their 
throats vying with one another in the lyrical 
contest ; but cold weather did not stifle all their 
music. 

The last day of February, for example, was 
raw, with the wind blowing from the east and 
the snow flying in spiteful gusts. I walked 
out to the swamp to see whether my song spar- 
rows had survived the "cold wave." Indeed, 
they had. Severa] of them sang most sweetly. 



A LOWLAND TRILLER. 97 

Yet the weather was so cold that, although I 
was w^armly clad, my hands and feet were tin- 
gling before I reached home. 

On the same day I saw one of these birds 
fly down to the stream amid the bushes, hop to 
the edge of the ice, and take a long drink, 
looking up at me in a cunning way and saying 
with his beady black eyes, " A bird must drink 
in cold weather as well as in warm." How 
red his little bare feet looked on the ice ! 

On the 2d and 3d of March the snow 
lay nearly half a foot deep on the ground and 
the wind howled dismally about the house, but 
a brave little sparrow living at the pond on the 
commons trilled " his psalm to the wintry sky " 
as if it were a pleasant day in June. Ah, this 
songster is a hero and deserves a sonnet ! 

Not all song sparrows belong to the tribe 
of " country cousins," as one writer has said. 
While they are not be found in the heart of 
the city, some of them love the suburbs. Not 
five rods from the street on which I live a 
number of these birds make their dwelling 
about the bush-fringed basins on the commons, 
where they construct their nests and rear their 
young. Almost every morning on my wav 
down town I hear a song sparrow rehearsing 
his matins right in the midst of a cluster of 



98 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

houses. He sings with as much confidence and 
gusto as his rural cousins in the distant marsh. 
I have said that he mostly dwells in low- 
lands, and he does ; but I have also found him 
far up a mountain side where there was wet 
ground covered with bushes. A damp place 
is what he seems to want, whether it is low or 
high. The song sparrow will make a pleasant 
pet, being very tuneful and easily kept on va- 
rious kinds of seeds. Still, it is much bet- 
ter to study him in his pleasant outdoor 
haunts. 



TALKING BIRDS. 

Familiar as the parrots are for household 
pets, it is surprising how little is really known 
of them in a scientific way. A satisfactory 
method of classifying them has not yet been 
decided upon by students of birds, and far too 
little is known of them in their native wilds. 
Most of my readers, especially if they have 
had the privilege of visiting the zoological gar- 
dens of some of our large cities, have doubt- 
less noticed that there are a large number 
of species in the parrot family. 

The best division of the parrot family seems 
to be the following : Stringops, Nestor, and 
JPsiftaeidce. Among the most interesting kinds 
are the parrots proper, which have short and 
even tails ; the macaws, including the parra- 
keets, whose tails are graduated, with the two 
middle feathers slender and much longer than 
the rest ; the cockatoos, which have a beautiful 
crest, sometimes of various colors ; the lories, 
and the broad-tails. 

Most of the parrots dwell in tropical cli- 

99 



100 NEWS FBOM THE BIRDS. 

mates, and are found in America, Africa, south- 
ern Asia, Australia, and many of the islands of 
the Pacific Ocean. Many of them are very beau- 
tiful in plumage, having such a variety of bril- 
liant colors that they flash like jewels as they 
swing; themselves on the branches. Their 
voices do not well correspond with their gor- 
geous attire, for they screech and cackle and 
cry until the woods echo with their disagree- 
able din. 

You seldom see one of these birds except 
in a cage, and perhaps you have the idea that 
they can scarcely fly at all, but are adapted 
only for clinging and climbing. In their na- 
tive state, however, many of them are very 
swift and agile on the wing. Mr. Audubon, 
in his interesting account of the Carolina par- 
rakeets, a species very recently extinct, says 
that their flight is rapid, straight, and continu- 
ous through the woods or over fields and 
rivers. As they fly they incline their bodies 
from side to side, so that the observer can 
sometimes see their upper parts and at other 
times their lower. They veer from a straight 
course only for obstacles, such as houses and 
tree trunks, glancing aside in a very graceful 
manner. On reaching a spot where food may 
be found, instead of alighting at once, as many 



TALKING BIKBS. 101 

birds do, the parrakeets take a good survey of 
the neighborhood, passing over it in circles of 
wide extent, first above the trees, and then 
they gradually drop lower until they almost 
touch the ground. Suddenly they sweep up- 
ward into the tree where they expect to get a 
supply of food. 

Much of their time is spent in the trees, 
climbing about in what seems to us an awk- 
ward way, now hanging by their claws, and 
now by their stout, curved upper mandibles, 
the muscles of their necks being very strong. 
And where do you suppose these birds roost ? 
Audubon says that their roosting places are 
in hollow trees and the holes chiseled out by 
the larger kinds of woodpeckers. At dusk a 
flock of these parrakeets may be seen alight- 
ing against the trunk of a tree in which there 
happens to be a large hollow. Just below the 
entrance they cling like woodpeckers to the 
bark, and then crawl into their warm couch for 
the night. 

But we are most interested in the power 
these birds possess to talk and imitate the 
human voice. Not all the species have this 
peculiar gift ; it is confined chiefly to the short 
and even-tailed kinds, such as the common 
gray parrot, and several others. The tongues 



102 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

of the talking species are large, broad, and 
fleshy at the tips. 

Many interesting stories are told of the 
mimicry of these talking birds, and of the 
almost human intelligence they display. They 
seem to enjoy fun, although there is always a 
serious look on their faces, showing that, like 
the best humorists, they do not laugh at their 
own sport, however much they may be amused. 
A gray parrot in my neighborhood is a great 
whistler, and utters all sorts of shrill noises, 
which sound like a boy making fun of you. 

His home is just across the street from a 
church. One evening while the young people 
were having their prayer meeting I heard a 
queer whistling outside, and thought it must 
be a mischievous boy trying to disturb the 
service. The parrot had just come into the 
neighborhood, so that I was not yet acquainted 
with his tricks. I bore with the whistling as 
long as I could, and then hurried out of the 
church, to give that unmannerly young man a 
piece of my mind and order him from the 
premises. In vain I looked around for him. 
Where could he be ? Presently I espied Mr. 
Parrot across the street on the porch of a 
friend's house. I stole back into the church 
without saying " nothin' to nobody," as the boys 



TALKING BIRDS. 103 

say ; but I did not get much good out of the 
remainder of the meeting; I was too much 
amused at my blunder. 

A neighbor of mine had a parrot which 
possessed remarkable talking powers and was 
extremely jealous of any attention paid to 
her mistress by a stranger. The fact is, she 
wanted to put the ban on all visitors, and 
would sometimes attack them when she was 
given the freedom of the room. Of course, she 
could say very pitifully, " Polly wants a crack- 
er," with a peculiar stress on the last syllable 
of the last word. 

When a visitor came whom she did not 
fancy, she would often cry in a loud voice, " Kat- 
tle-trap ! rattle-trap ! " as fast as she could re- 
peat it, so that she had to be hushed before 
the conversation could proceed. Some of her 
mistress's callers seemed to amuse rather than 
angel* her, and so she would break into one 
peal of laughter after another to drown the 
talk. She was very fond of her mistress, and 
would often perch on her shoulder and caress 
her, saying, " O-o-h ! o-o-h ! " in her most affec- 
tionate tones. 

When her mistress stepped into another 
part of the house or over to her neighbor's, 
the parrot would call, " Phibby ! Ph-i-i-b-b-y ! " 



104 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

which was her way of pronouncing Phoebe. A 
favorite place for her cage was by the window 
looking out upon the veranda, where she 
could see her master as he came home for his 
meals, and as soon as she espied him she would 
cry with all the joy fulness of a child, " Mas- 
ter ! master ! " always putting the accent on 
the last syllable. 

One day a woman living in another part of 
the house had several visitors. Polly's mistress 
was not at home. The visitors were anxious 

to see the bird, and so Mrs. K opened the 

door between the two apartments and stepped 
into the room where Polly had been left. The 
bird was sitting on top of her cage, and no 
sooner had she seen her would-be caller than 
she screamed with rage, clambered down from 
her perch, and rushed toward the intruder. 

Mrs. K , in her fright, sprang upon a chair 

and held her skirts out of Polly's reach. When 
Polly saw that she had treed, or rather chaired, 
her caller, she broke into peal after peal of 
laughter, as if she realized the ridiculous- 
ness of the situation. She kept the woman 
on the chair until she had had her fill of sport, 
when she walked solemnly away, leaving her 
frightened guest to step down and hurry 
home. 






* ■■'■'■%> 







Polly's misadventure. 



106 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

A small girl in the neighborhood was the 
object of Polly's special dislike, and whenever 
she came into the house the bird would re- 
peat, in scornful tones, " Don't like her ! don't 
like her ! " 

A serious mishap overtook Polly one day — 
one that might have proved fatal. She had a 
sort of rack about five feet high, on which she 
spent a large part of her time. On the day 
of which I speak the rack was placed out in 
the summer kitchen, where her mistress was at 
work. Under the floor there was a cistern, 
which was reached by a trapdoor, and this 
door happened to be open. In some way Polly's 
rack was thrown over, hurling her into the 
cistern, where she paddled about on the cold 
water, crying at the top of her voice. At the 
same time her mistress, almost beside herself 
with fright, and entirely helpless, rushed about 
the house calling, " Polly's in the cistern ! 
Polly's in the cistern ! Oh ! oh ! " 

I was, fortunately, not far off, and hearing 
the alarm, rushed into the kitchen, and thrust- 
ing the water pail into the cistern with a pole 
used for that purpose, succeeded at length in 
getting it under the poor bird, so that she 
could seize the rim with her claws. How 
she laughed when she was lifted out ! The 



TALKING BIRDS. 107 

whole house echoed with her outbursts of 
merriment. You may depend upon it, how- 
ever, she fought shy of the cistern after that 
day, always going around it in the most care- 
ful way, 



A SWIFT-WINGED TEIBE. 

You have seen them — the swallows — glid- 
ing through the air with the swiftness of the 
wind or poising for a moment on the wing and 
then darting toward the ground as if on the 
point of committing suicide by dashing them- 
selves to pieces. But so dexterous are they 
that one turn of their balanced wings sends 
them up again like an air-iilled balloon. 

No birds are more constantly on the wing. 
It is in that way that they take their food. 
Perhaps you have never thought how perfectly 
they are adapted in every way for doing this, 
just as if the Creator had said in the begin- 
ning, " I will now make the swallow tribe to 
tilt and poise and wheel in the air." 

Then he made their bodies very light ; gave 
them plenty of plumage, very buoyant and 
yet so firm* that it is not easily ruffled by the 
wind ; attached to those bodies broad, strong 
wings and forked tails' with which to propel 
and steer themselves. Withal, he gave them 
the precise form which is best adapted for 

108 



A SWIFT-WINGED TRIBE. 109 

speedy movement — the form that men have 
found makes the swiftest sailing vessels. 

Besides, they have very small and weak 
feet, so that they have little temptation to walk 
about on the ground or stand on perches for a 
long time. Yet they can cling to upright and 
even projecting walls if there are any protuber- 
ances, because their feet are formed for that 
purpose, and their tail feathers are so stiff that 
they help to brace their bodies. Their sight 
is very keen ; they can espy a tiny insect afar 
off even while bounding swiftly through the 
air. Their mouths are wide at the gape, and 
so are their gullets, and this aids them in catch- 
ing and swallowing their food while on the 
wing. 

You have often seen them flying swiftly 
over the surface of a river, pond, or lake, some- 
times dipping lightly into the water. Perhaps 
their purpose in grazing the water is to rinse 
their plumes, but their main object in these 
long, reaching flights is to catch the insects that 
rise from the surface of the water. I have 
often watched them taking their meals in this 
way, especially of an evening. A small, white, 
fuzzy insect starts up slowly from the water, 
probably trying its gauzy wings for the first 
time, but it does not rise more than a few feet 



110 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

before the sharp eyes of a swallow espy it; 
then the bird makes a swift swoop for it, and 
never misses its aim. There is no escape for 
the insect, which is slow of movement. In this 
way thousands of insects are devoured in a 
single evening. Nothing could be more grace- 
ful than the flight of these birds at such times. 
Usually they fly a little lower than the insect 
aimed at, and as they approach it, rise in a 
swift, graceful curve, whose highest point is at- 
tained when the prize has been secured. Of 
course, the insect is seized in the bird's beak 
and swallowed at once, and perhaps that is the 
reason these birds are called swallows. 

Well can I remember that, in my boyhood 
days, I thought a swallow was a swallow, and 
never knew until long afterward that there 
were many species of this family of winged 
athletes. None of the bright young readers 
of this book are so ignorant, I hope ; but if 
they are, I ought to be the last person to make 
sport of them. Think of the various kinds of 
swallows — barn swallows, cliff or eave swal- 
lows, white-breasted swallows, bank swallows, 
rough-winged swallows, and white-rumped swal- 
lows, all of them skimmers of the water and 
cleavers of the air. 

But you must not mistake the common chim- 



A SWIFT-WINGED TRIBE. HI 

ney swift for a swallow, although it is often 
called the chimney swallow. The fact is, odd 
as it may seem, scientific men have put the 
swifts and swallows not only in different fami- 
lies, but even in different orders, so that the 
former belong to the same class as the night- 
hawks, whip-poor-wills, and humming birds, 
while the latter are classed with the perching 
birds, even though they fly more than they 
perch. However, the purple or house martin, 
so well known about our country homes and in 
many of our cities, belongs not only to the same 
order but also to the same family as the swal- 
lows. They — the martins — are just as closely 
related to the barn swallow and the cliff swal- 
low as those two birds are related to each other. 
You know the cliff swallows, do you ? But 
perhaps you do not know that the cliff swallow 
and the eave swallow are one species. Before 
man comes into a country where they dwell, 
they build wholly upon the walls of cliffs, in 
the small holes or beneath the overhanging 
shelves ; but when barns are put up, they seem 
to think that the covered space beneath the 
eaves is a still better site, and so you have often 
seen these places lined with a solid row of 
adobe cottages. Perhaps you have watched the 
birds while engaged in house building. They 



112 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

fly to a bank and fill their mouths with the stiff 
clay, and then, flying to the eaves, spread on 
their mortar layer upon layer, until they have 
made a cozy apartment with a neck, sometimes 
quite long and curved, for an entrance. The 
inside is lined with straw, wool, and feathers. 
It is said that when a place has been used for 
three or four seasons the birds leave it for 
another site, perhaps because the mud grad- 
ually loses its clinging quality or becomes 
brittle. 

Among the enemies of the eave swallows 
are the bluebirds, which often appropriate 
their adobe houses for their own use, and usu- 
ally succeed in driving the rightful owners 
away from the immediate premises. A friend 
told me that a pair of bluebirds once decided 
that a swallow lodge would make them a good 
nesting place, and so they took possession of it 
while the rightful owners were absent, and 
held them at bay on their return until they 
gave up the contest. Mr. Bluebird, for all his 
dainty ways and soft voice, is quite a pugilist, 
and dearly loves to have his own way. 

In the Western States, in places where 
there are very few barns, the cliff swallows 
still follow their savage customs, so to speak, 
as does the Indian who is not yet civilized. 



A SWIFT-WINGED TRIBE. 113 

Here, on the steep cliffs of the ravines and 
canons, they build nests by the hundreds, liv- 
ing in colonies. A cliff may have a very 
warty appearance in spots on account of these 
nests, which seem to be built in clusters, some- 
times containing as high as two hundred sepa- 
rate domiciles. One writer estimates that on 
the face of a single cliff in Kansas there were 
between two and three thousand nests. They 
were gourd-shaped, built of red clay, fastened 
in the interstices of the rocks, and sparsely 
lined with grass. Now and then a straw was 
wrought into the masonry. 

While the eave swallows are engaged in 
house building on the outside of a barn, the 
barn swallows are often engaged in the same 
occupation within, building their nests on the 
sides of logs, rafters, and joists. Mud is also 
used in these nests, but it is mixed with straw 
—these birds will not use " bricks without 
straw " — and the structure is open at the top 
like the nests of most birds. 

The tails of the barn swallows are deeply 
forked, which is doubtless an advantage to 
them in clinging to the sides of the various 
timbers on which they build. Their flight is 
also very swift, and the rapidity and precision 
with which they dash through small holes cut 



114 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

in the gables of barns is little short of marvel- 
ous. They do not stop to perch first upon the 
edge of the hole, but close their wings and 
dart through like an arrow. 

While walking along a stream, have you 
not often noticed that the bank, especially if it 
is rather high, is punctured with small holes % 
Most likely they are the nests of the bank 
swallows, or sand martins, hollowed out by the 
birds themselves to a depth of from two to 
four feet in the soft, sandy soil, and slightly 
enlarged at the end for the nest proper — a 
strange habit for bright, swift-winged denizens 
of the air. Why should they choose to live in 
a damp cellar when they might have a pretty 
cottage on a limb out in the open air and pleas- 
ant sunshine ? Some birds, like some people, 
have peculiar tastes. 

If you can get near a barn swallow, notice 
what a lustrous steel-blue coat he wears. The 
coat of the cliff swallow is of the same color, 
but his other markings are different. The 
upper parts of the white-breasted swallow are 
glossy green, which catches the sun's rays 
and throws them into a sort of emerald rhap- 
sody ; but the plumage of the bank swallow 
and rough-winged swallow is much plainer, 
being a lusterless gray. 



A SWIFT-WIXGED TRIBE. H5 

Sometimes several families of young swal- 
lows which, have just left their nests may be 
seen sitting in a row on a fence rail or some 
other perch, waiting for their parents to bring 
them their luncheons, and all the while keep- 
ing up an incessant chirping. You may get 
quite close to them, but just when you have 
made up your mind that they are still too 
young to fly and that you can catch them, 
away they skim, with almost as much ease as 
their elders. 

A bare mention can be made of the tree 
swallows, which build their nests in the de- 
serted woodpecker holes of trees in the vicin- 
ity of marshes, ponds, and rivers, the beautiful 
violet-green swallows of our Western States, 
and of the rough- winged swallows, which nest 
in the crevices of stone walls and bridge 
arches. 



MAESH WEENS. 

I thikk it will be interesting to tell you 
about two little creatures of America which 
are indeed bundles of good cheer — the long- 
billed and short-billed marsh wrens. Let us 
first make our bow to the long-billed marsh 
wren, a very cunning little bird which selects 
a home in boggy places. Like many people 
who can afford it, he spends his winters in the 
Southern States, and then comes north in the 
summer, making his presence known by his 
lively, chattering song and quaint behavior 
among the reeds and grasses of the lowlands. 

Near the eastern shores of the Middle 
States he chooses the salt marshes for his sum- 
mer home, and also the tide- water rivers that 
empty into the Atlantic. At other places 
almost any reedy swamp satisfies him. Here is 
a problem for our young readers. In the East- 
ern States he is seldom, if ever, found north of 
Massachusetts, and yet some of his brothers 
and sisters of the same species spend the sum- 
mer away up in Greenland. How they con- 

116 



MARSH WRENS. 117 

trive to get through Vermont, New Hampshire, 
and Maine without being seen is a question ; 
and why they pass those States and never 
tarry for the summer is another question still 
more difficult to answer. 

During the summer they are seldom found 
far from the rivers and swamps where they 
dwell. They feed on insects and their larvae, 
and on a certain kind of green grasshopper 
that lives amid the grasses of low grounds.* 
Their song is a queer ditty, being a rather low, 
creaking sound somewhat like that produced 
by air bubbling up through the mud or boggy 
ground when you tread upon it. One author 
describes this song as a sharp, metallic twitter. 
Another says it begins with rather a harsh, 
squeaking note, followed by a rattling twitter, 
and ends much as it began. 

It is interesting to note the oddly-con- 
structed nest of these birds. In some respects 
it is like the little nest of the reed warbler, 
but in other respects it differs from it very 
much. It is hung among culms or reeds by 
being fastened at the sides, and often it swings 
above the water of the marsh. 

However, it is more bulky than the reed 
wren's and is globular in form. Its walls 
are made of wet rushes plastered together 



118 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

and made firm with mud. It is about the 
shape and size of an ordinary cocoanut. It 
is closed all around and above, but a small 
hole is left at the side for a doorway, usually 
nearest the top, though sometimes, strange to 
say, nearest the bottom. Notice how curious. 
The upper edge of this door-way projects over 
the lower edge like a penthouse, so that the 
rain can not enter. What a cunning contri- 
vance ! The hole is sometimes so beset with 
down that it is closed up, though, of course, 
the birds can slip in and out by pressing the 
down apart. 

The nest is lined with fine soft grass and 
sometimes with feathers. Do not the little 
ones have a cozy room to sleep in until they 
are able to venture out into the wide, wide 
world? When the walls of the little house 
become thoroughly dried they are so strong 
that they resist all kinds of w r eather, and they 
are bound so firmly to the adjacent culms that 
they can not be broken loose by any stress of 
wind. When built near the ocean these nests 
are placed above the reach of the highest 
tides. Six eggs of a delicate dark fawn color 
decorate the bottom of the globular dwelling. 

When nervous or frightened, the marsh 
wren presents a really comical appearance. 



MARSH WRENS. 119 

His head is thrown np and his tail thrust 
forward, so that they almost touch, making the 
bird look like an irregular ring or triangle 
darting about among the weeds and bushes. 
Very often, like the reed wren, the marsh 
wren clings sidewise to the stem of a cat-tail ; 
then he may take it into his head to grasp 
two culms near together, one with each wiry 
little foot, so that as they bend outward his 
legs are stretched apart in a horizontal line. 

Still another prank must be described. He 
will sometimes toss himself up in the air, then 
drop down into the weeds with a graceful 
flutter, singing his little song while going 
through the droll performance. No less odd, 
but vastly more puzzling, is the fact that these 
wrens build more nests than they need for 
breeding purposes, and why they do this is a 
disputed question. Some think that the males 
build them to give themselves something to do 
while their spouses are hatching, and they 
occupy them for shelter and sleeping apart- 
ments. Others are disposed to think that 
they are built to lead the nest hunters or 
other foes astray, as the birds always trail and 
tumble toward these nests when a supposed 
enemy disturbs them. Another opinion is that 
they are constructed merely for ornament. 



120 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

The short-billed marsh wren is much like 
his long-billecl relative, though the close ob- 
server can readily tell them apart. He does 
not choose such wet, boggy places, but rather 
marshes that become dry in the summer time. 
The reason of this is not far to seek, for he 
builds his nest most frequently on the ground 
or very near it, and never above standing 
or flowing water. Although the nest is quite 
similar to that of the long-bill, it has no mud 
plastered into the walls, and is, therefore, not 
so compactly built. 

When the nest is approached, the birds 
hover near the intruder, chattering and scold- 
ing in a violent manner. These birds also 
build a number of nests that they do not use. 
They are very difficult to see, but their noisy 
chattering among the reeds proclaims their 
whereabouts. Their song is not very musical, 
but is pleasing to the lover of out-of-the-way 
sounds in Nature, because it enlivens the other- 
wise quiet and lonely marshes. No bird could 
be more adept at sliding up and down the 
culms of the grass and sedges, tipping, tilting 
this way and that, and tossing its tail in every 
manner imaginable. 



THE VIEEOS. 

Very interesting birds are the vireos, and 
I am sure you will like them if you once learn 
to know them. Perhaps before you see their 
flitting forms you will hear them singing in 
the willows or maples, and then you may have 
to look a long while before your eye catches 
them. The chief reason why they are so hard 
to see in the trees is that their colors are vari- 
ous shades of olive, and therefore closely re- 
semble the green of the leaves, especially when 
the sun gilds them. 

There are various kinds of vireos in this 
country — the warbling, red-eyed, white-eyed, 
Philadelphia, blue-headed, yellow-throated, and 
several others. All of them build their nests 
after the same general pattern ; that is, they 
are fastened by the rim to a branch and are not 
supported at the bottom — a little basket swing- 
ing from a bough, making a dainty hammock 
for the mother bird and her brood. 

The warbling vireo is a familiar little bird, 
often choosing the trees about a farmhouse 

10 121 



122 



NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 




Vireo (vireo belli). 



for a nesting 
place. One 
summer I 
found a nest 
with several 
little ones in 
it suspend- 
ed from the 
branches of an apple tree not more than three 
rods from a friend's house. By climbing to 
the top of a stepladder I could peep into 
the rocking cradle, and see the fuzzy babies 
within. But the parents did not in the least 
fancy my making so free with their nest. They 
called and scolded and screamed as only vireos 
can, and even dashed at me, snapping their 
bills savagely in my face. The nest was 
fastened by the rim in the fork of a limb, 



THE VIREOS. 123 

and was bound to the twigs over halfway 
round. 

What a musician the warbling vireo is ! 
He does not sing a little run and then stop for 
a few moments, as the sparrows do, but keeps 
up an incessant flow of song-talk often for hours, 
scarcely pausing long enough to take breath or 
swallow an insect. It sounds as if the bird 
were talking to himself in a tuneful way on 
some theme that did not require very profound 
thought. You have seen a musician sit down 
before a piano and compose his music as he 
played. Well, that seems to be what our little 
minstrel is doing, except that he sings, and does 
not play on an instrument. Some one has said 
that he seems to select a text and preach 
a sermon on it, and for that reason he is 
sometimes called " the preacher." That is 
quite apt, I must confess; but if he does 
preach he does not give his sermon all his 
attention, for while he discourses he flits 
about from twig to twig, picking insects for 
his luncheon. He is the only parson I have 
ever heard of who can eat and preach at the 
same time. 

There is a good deal of variety in his song. 
Now he runs up to a very high note in the 
scale, and now to a low one. And what does 



124 NEWS FEOM THE BIRDS. 

lie seem to say ? " Dear, de-a-r, this is pleasant, 
pl-e-a-sant, swinging in the branches. The snn 
shines so brightly, so-o b-r-i-i-ghtl-y-y-y ! I'm 
so happy, hap-p-y-y, h-a-a-p-py ! " All this is 
blended and woven together in a really won- 
derful mesh of song. 

As a musician, however, he has a rival in 
the red-eyed vireo, w r hose song is shorter, it is 
true, but louder and more vigorous. This 
bird is larger than our little friend just de- 
scribed, and seems to like the company of 

warblers in the autumn. Ao;ain and as;ain I 

© © 

have, found a single red-eye flitting about in 
the woods with an army of warblers, as if 
he said : " I like these little tilters better than 
my own kin ; I can agree with them better. 
Sometimes one's own relatives are the hardest 

to o;et along; with." 

© © 

My jolly, nervous little friend, the white- 
eyed vireo, does not take to the woods as do 
his relatives, but selects low thickets where he 
can hide himself when he wants to, sing his 
rolling, earnest tunes, and build his nest in 
some low sapling or bush. If you go too near 
the home of these birds in the breeding season, 
you will get the worst scolding you have ever 
heard, as they dash about the bushes without 
one bit of fear of being seen themselves, their 




The white-eyed vireo. 



126 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

white eyes showing like tiny marbles in the 
sides of their heads. 

Many bird students have gone quite into 
raptures over the song of the white-eye. Mr. 
Burroughs thinks he mimics the songs of other 
birds, and that in this respect only the mock- 
ing bird goes ahead of him. Another writer 
says that in July and August this little bird 
sometimes sings with so much power and 
variety that you think at first there must be 
three or four songsters in the bushes, each try- 
ing to distance the other. He also declares 
that the white-eye imitates the notes of other 
birds, among them those of the robin, wren, 
catbird, flicker, goldfinch, and song sparrow. 

In my neighborhood, and, indeed, in the 
entire State of Ohio, except, perhaps, in the 
extreme northern part, the blue-headed or soli- 
tary vireo is only a migrant ; so I have had 
no chance to study its breeding habits. It has 
several times favored me with a song in the 
spring, and even in the autumn it occasionally 
breaks into a queer strain that is half music 
and half squeak. Its true song in its northern 
summer home is said to be very fine, and its 
nest a handsome little structure, hung in the 
fork of a branch in some quiet and secluded 
place. 



A WINGED FISHEKMAN. 

Shall I ever forget a bright spring day 
when I sat on the slope beneath a tier of 
shade trees and watched the bobolinks cir- 
cling and poising over the meadow r below me, 
hurling out their wild tumult of song on the 
glad air ! It was, indeed, one of my most 
memorable " bird days/' and if my life were a 
desert — which it is not, I assure you — I should 
call that day an oasis, a fair, blooming Para- 
dise. 

But, although my attention was bent for 
the most part upon the bobolinks and meadow 
larks, every once in a while I would see a 
kingfisher dash up over the hill from the creek 
in the valley, holding a fish in her long bill. 
It was sure proof that she had a nest with 
young somewhere in the neighborhood, and I 
determined to investigate later in the day, when 
the meadow birds would loosen their hold upon 
me. It was nearly dark before I could get 
away. Knowing of a deep gully cut in 
the hillside by freshets, I turned aside from 

127 



128 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

iny course homeward to examine it. Sure 
enough, there was a hole in the steep, sandy 
bank, just as I had expected, and I felt certain 
it must be the nest of the kingfisher. 

But it was too late to tarry, and so I 
hurried home. In a day or two I went back 
to make certainty doubly sure about the hole in 
the bank. A hundred or more yards away, in 
a sloping field, I flung myself on the ground, 
and determined to wait and watch. And I 
waited a good while, too. By and by, how- 
ever, there was a loud, rattling cry, and then 
the kingfisher came sweeping up from the val- 
ley with a fish in her beak. But her sharp 
eye soon espied me, and then she set up a 
series of screams that made the welkin ring, 
and that proclaimed her secret to all the world. 
It was a long time before she would leave the 
apple tree in which she had taken refuge, and 
I was going to miss my dinner ; but at last 
my patience was rewarded ; she dashed to the 
very hole in the bank w^hich I had previously 
seen, and dropped her quarry into the hungry 
mouths within. Then she swept like an arrow 
down the hill to the creek. I could not bring 
myself to dig out that nest, much as I wanted 
to see its contents, for it seemed too heartless 
a deed. 



A WINGED FISHERMAN. 129 

Had I done so, I should have found an 
orifice from three to six feet long, extending 
straight in, or perhaps at a slight angle, with 
the nest at the end, occupied by six or seven 
baby kingfishers. Besides the little birds, there 
would very likely have been a number of bones 
of fishes in the nest which the old bird had 
swallowed and then disgorged in the forni of 
pellets. 

Many, many times I have seen this agile 
fisherman sitting quietly on a dead branch ex- 
tending out over a stream. There he would 
sit and watch until some unfortunate fish came 
in sight in the water below, when, as quick as 
a flash, he would dart down after it and grab 
it in his strong beak before the fish could 
collect its wits. His prey secured, the bird 
would fly away to some safe place and swal- 
low its scaly prize. 

Some time ago I read a story which proves 
that this bird, wily as it is, sometimes does 
not act as wisely as you would expect. It was 
a rather cold day, so the story goes, and a coat- 
ing of ice had been formed on the ponds and 
stream^ A kingfisher was seen sitting quietly 
on a branch overhanging a pond, when sud- 
denly it dropped from its perch and dashed 
into the water below. The spectator expected 




The kingfisher keeping vigil. 



A WINGED FISHERMAN. 131 

to see it rise the next moment with a fish in 
its bill, but, strange to say, it did not. What 
could have befallen the bird ? The narrator 
of the incident says that he hurried to the 
spot, and soon found a hole in the ice through 
which the kingfisher had broken, but still the 
bird was not to be seen until he looked farther, 
when he found it dead beneath the ice a short 
distance from the orifice. Perhaps it had 
stunned itself when it struck the ice, or per- 
haps, having once got underneath, the poor 
bird could not break its way up. 

Kingfishers may also be seen flying along 
the windings of a stream only a few feet above 
the water, and when they catch a glimpse of a 
fish below, down they plunge, and seldom fail 
to secure the finny prize. They are lovers of 
water, and prefer the vicinity of streams and 
lakes, and yet a certain naturalist says that he 
has found these birds in the desert regions of 
southern Arizona, far from water, feeding on 
lizards and insects. 

These birds often poise over the water, as a 
hawk does over the meadow, the eye intent on 
the finny tribes below. If the nest is near a 
stream and the old birds are disturbed, the 
female will throw herself upon the water and 
flutter and flounder about as if she were 



132 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

severely wounded and utterly unable to rise, 
all this being done to lead the intruder to 
wade out after her and thus fail to find her 
precious brood. At the same time her mate 
sits on a branch near by, flirting his tail, erect- 
ing his crest, and then springs out into the air 
passing and repassing before his enemy with 
loud cries of alarm and anger. 

All that has been said thus far applies 
only to the belted kingfisher, so familiar in 
almost every part of this country. However, 
there is also the Texan kingfisher, a beautiful 
little bird, its upper parts being dark green, 
with a white collar around the hind neck ; its 
wings and tail spotted with transverse bars of 
white ; its lower parts pure white, with a band 
of dark green across its breast. The sides 
are spotted with green. This bird makes its 
home mostly in South America, but some- 
times wanders north as far as Texas and Ari- 
zona. 



A JOLLY FIELD BIRD. 

The American meadow lark is a most 
charming bird, one whose acquaintance it is 
well worth your while to cultivate. You can 
not mistake him for any other bird. Watch 
him as he stands yonder in the short grass of 
the meadow or clover field, or upon a stump 
or a fence post, holding his form proudly erect, 
his head in the air, while his golden bosom, 
with its . black crescent on the chest, flashes in 
the sun ; or see him as he starts up and wheels 
away in graceful flight, beating the air with 
short, sharp wing strokes and spreading out 
his fanlike tail with its broad trimming of 
white ; or listen to his fine whistle as he darts 
like a feathered arrow across the fields : " Good 
ch-e-e-r-r ! good ch-e-e-r-r-r ! " By these signs 
you will know him the very next time you 
meet him in the field. 

In my neighborhood (southwestern Ohio) 
the meadow larks are plentiful. Every field 
and meadow has its presiding geniuses, so to 

133 



134 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

speak, and at the proper season nests are 
easily found. The larks arrive quite early in 
the spring, and sometimes in the latter part 
of the winter, from their jaunt in the South. 
In 1893 they came back about the middle of 
February, but the present year (1894), for 
some cause, they did not come so early. On 
the third of March, which was an extremely 
fine day, I took a long ramble, but did not 
see or hear a single lark. The next morning, 
however, when I stepped out into my back- 
yard a little after daybreak, one of the first 
sounds that greeted me was the piercing 
whistle of the larks, as it came lilting across 
the fields. 

What does that prove ? That the birds 
must have come from some other locality dur- 
ing the night. Some of them were doubtless 
the same individuals that were here last year, 
and the question is, how could they tell in 
the night when they had arrived at the old, 
familiar feeding ground ? Perhaps they timed 
themselves, though, so that they would reach 
this place just as clay broke. At any rate, they 
at once heralded their arrival with song, pro- 
claiming to all whom it might concern that 
they were back from their southern jaunt. 

The song of the meadow lark is very fine — 



A JOLLY FIELD BIRD. 135 

a real melody. What a pity there is not more 
of it ! It usually consists of two prolonged 
syllables blended together as if by a sort of 
loopi>r festoon and delivered with a swinging 
movement that is the poetry of grace. Is it 
not true that almost everything you hear makes 
a picture in your mind ? Well, this is the 
picture that is produced in my mind by the 
song of the meadow lark when he whistles 
the whole run at his best : 



Only the wavering line ought to be the color 
of gleaming gold. Sometimes it is varied a 
good deal, as, for instance, when the two syl- 
lables are run together as if they were one, or 
when the song closes with the upward instead 
of the downward inflection. More than once 
I have heard a lark in a certain meadow con- 
clude his song with a peculiar note that 
sounded as if a spring had got worked loose in 
the music-box of his throat. 

One of the lark's oddest musical perform- 
ances is his air song, which is a wild, continuous 
medley lasting several minutes, and not de- 
livered intermittently or at intervals, as is his 
other song. This air song is sometimes rung 



136 NEWS FROM THE BIKDS. 

out while the bird is poising on the wing, and 
at other times while he is sweeping along in 
straight flight, and is always sent forth in a 
kind of ecstasy. 

If you get a chance, watch the meadow lark 
during his vocal performance, and you will 
notice that he usually opens and closes his 
mandibles twice during the brief strain, open- 
ing them widely when he strikes the high 
notes and bringing them almost together when 
he emits the lower ones. This will prove that, 
after all, the song is not a w T histle produced 
with the mandibles in some way, as might be 
supposed, but a real voice tone, emitted di- 
rectly from the throat. The same thing is true 
of the songs of all birds — the mandibles are 
thrown far apart to produce the high notes, 
as you can easily prove for yourselves if you 
will watch the brown thrasher, towhee bunt- 
ing, bush sparrow, and so on, while they are 
singing. 

Where would you look for the nests of 
these birds? Always on the ground. And 
very neat nurseries they usually are, though 
some individuals seem to be better architects 
than others. For instance, I found a nest in 
a pasture field where the cattle had cropped 
the grass quite short, so that the bird domicile 



A JOLLY FIELD BIRD. 137 

had really no protection, being only slightly 
arched up in the rear. Then I have found 
others that were hidden cozily in the clover, 
most of the nest roofed over by a fabric of 
dry grass, and the rest of the roof completed 
by weaving together the green clover stems and 
leaves above it. Several of these homesteads 
had little pathways running up to them under 
the overarching clover — a little grassy man- 
sion, one might say, with its driveway or prom- 
enade leading to the door. Oddly enough, one 
summer I found one of these nests which was 
verv deftlv concealed and roofed over, while 
not more than ten feet away was another which 
was left wholly exposed, no attempt at conceal- 
ment being made. 

But where do you suppose our pretty larks 
roost? On the ground amid the soft grass. 
When I go prowling around at night in the 
fields, they are frightened from their grassy 
couches, and go scudding away, uttering their 
familiar sputtering call. But I verified this 
discovery in another way. I once had two 
young pet larks in a large cage, and, although 
there were plenty of perches, they almost al- 
ways preferred to sleep on the floor of the cage 
in the grassy bed I spread for them. Even 

when I made them no grass couch, they would 
11 



138 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

squat on the bare floor and spend the night 
there. Other birds — red-winged blackbirds 
and catbirds — kept for a while in the same 
cage, roosted on the perches. 

One day in early spring I saw two larks 
fighting. It was an amusing performance. At 
first .they avoided coming into direct contact. 
One would leap up into the air, as if he had 
steel springs in his legs, and come down close 
to the other, which would bound away just in 
time. Thus they danced about for a while, 
and then flew over to a little grassy knoll where 
they engaged for a few moments in quite a 
vigorous set-to, flying together, rising in the 
air, clawing each other, and shrieking angrily. 
Which w r on the victory I never knew, for pres- 
ently they flew r away over the hilltop, whither 
I could not follow them. 



TRAVELS OF THE BIRDS. 



Long before it became the fashion for hu- 
man city dwellers to "go away for the sum- 
mer " our little brothers and sisters of the air, 
the birds, formed the habit of summering in 
the cool North and wintering in the sunny 
South. Many birds are great travelers. There 
are species that spend the winter in the West 
Indies,. Central America, and even South 
America, and the summer in Greenland and 
Alaska. Some of these voyagers are tiny 
birds, not more than three inches in length, 
like the blue-gray gnat-catcher and the black- 
throated blue warbler — gay little blossoms 
with wings and beaks. It is simply wonderful 
to think of the immense distances they traverse 
in their semi-annual journeys, sweeping over 
mountains, valleys, plains, and large bodies of 
water, stopping at intervals to rest and recruit 
their strength, and then resuming their airy 
pilgrimage. Genuine " globe trotters " some of 
them are. 

139 



140 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

How do the birds accomplish these jour- 
neys ? Well, of course they go by the air line, 
not by land or water ; on the wing, not on 
foot or by car or steamer or balloon. As a 
rule they go in flocks, each group doubtless 
being guided by some bird whose acquaintance 
with the route enables him to pilot them safe- 
ly. Sometimes a bird becomes separated from 
his fellows, and then he must travel alone, or 
else remain for the season in the neighborhood 
where he has been lost, spending the time as 
best he can. In this way it happened a few 
winters ago that I had a zebra bird at my 
elbow every time I strolled out to my favorite 
woodland. 

You have, perhaps, seen large assemblies 
of birds in the autumn flitting about and 
engaging in most vigorous chattering; and 
they have remained in your neighborhood for 
several days, and then suddenly disappeared. 
The purpose of the gathering was doubtless to 
arrange for the long journey southward, to see 
that all the birds which were to join the com- 
pany had done so, to elect their leaders, and 
decide upon the best route to take. 

In the South, when spring arrives, similar 
preparations are made for the journey to the 
North, as I have proved by observation. One 



TRAVELS OF THE BIRDS. 141 

clay in April I found a large assembly of chat- 
tering red- winded blackbirds in the willows of 
a Louisiana swamp, a few miles west of New 
Orleans ; their conduct w r as precisely like their 
conduct in the North when in autumn they 
are making arrangements for the trip to their 
winter home in the South. A few weeks later 
I found a company of male bobolinks in north- 
ern Alabama holding counsel in the treetops 
and piping farewell to the rice and cotton fields 
before taking wing for the meadows and clover 
fields of the North. Perhaps some of them 
were the same birds which I found tinkling so 
gayly about my own home in Ohio a week later. 
As has been said, it w r as the male bobo- 
links only that were holding the conference 
in Alabama. It is an odd fact that the males 
of many species of birds arrive first at their 
summer homes, and are followed a few days 
later by the sedate females, and then the 
mating begins in real earnest. Why both 
sexes do not come together is a problem that 
I have not yet solved. In the case of other 
species, such as warblers and sparrows, the 
males and females journey in company, the 
selecting of mates often taking place while the 
birds are en route, or even before their travels 
are begun. 



142 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

Many species travel by night. Why is 
this ? I can merely suggest as a possible rea- 
son that at night the weather is cooler than by 
day, and there is less to distract the birds' 
attention from their travels, and hence less 
temptation to stop by the way. The noc- 
turnal flight of the migrating hosts may be 
proved in two ways : First, go out at night in 
the spring or autumn and you will hear the 
chirping of the feathered voyagers overhead 
as they pass in loose flocks ; second, if you 
take a tramp to the fields and woods early on 
a spring morning you will find numerous spe- 
cies that could not be seen at all on the pre- 
vious day. Besides, those who have charge 
of lighthouses often find that many birds dash 
against them, often with fatal eifect, on foggy 
and stormy nights. 

Do you ask if they make their long jour- 
neys by a continuous flight ? No, they do not ; 
most species go by stages. As the warm 
weather comes on at their southern winter 
home, they leave for a more northern latitude, 
perhaps a night's flight away ; here they may 
spend a few days or a week, enjoying the 
pleasant weather and feeding on the numerous 
insects lured out of their winter quarters by 
the warm sunshine. By and by the birds will 




bfi 



O 

e 
c 

1 



144 KEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

make another nocturnal journey northward, 
and thus by degrees the whole pilgrimage is 
accomplished. 

Here is an instance which came under my 
own eye. On the twelfth of April my train, 
bound for New Orleans, stopped for some min- 
utes at a small station in northern Alabama. 
Stepping from the train, I got a glimpse of sev- 
eral myrtle warblers flitting about in the trees 
of the woods near the tracks. About four weeks 
later, on my return to the North, I stopped for 
several days at the same station to watch the 
birds, but not a single myrtle warbler did I see 
in the whole country round, though I traversed 
it for miles over valley and mountain. These 
warblers had stopped there for a while in April 
on their migratory tour, and then had skimmed 
away for more northern climes. 

Yet some of them did not go very far — 
not more than eighty or ninety miles — for I 
found them quite abundant on the ninth of 
May on the top of Lookout Mountain in Ten- 
nessee, where they probably breed; while others 
had hied away to the distant North, some of 
them venturing as far as Greenland. It is 
somewhat curious that some species that breed 
in the far North will also breed in the South 
on the wooded tops of high mountains. 



TRAVELS OF THE BIRDS. 145 



II. 

L have stated that birds mostly travel in 
flocks. These are doubtless guided by the 
older members of the company, which have 
become familiar with the route by going over 
it year by year. It is evident that young birds 
could not find the way themselves, for my ex- 
perience in rearing them by hand is that, while 
there are some things that they learn by native 
instinct, there are many other things that they 
must be taught. 

It is said that there are certain routes that 
migrants are most apt to pursue in their jour- 
neys, and that they are not equally distributed 
across the continent. Coast lines, mountain 
ranges, extensive valleys, rivers, and lakes form 
what might be called guideposts for these 
winged pilgrims, so that they do not lose their 
way in the trackless oceans of the air. But 
they can not see their landmarks by night, you 
object. That, no doubt, is true. Yet know- 
ing the point from which they start in the 
evening, the direction in which they wish to 
go, and the distance they can travel in a given 
number of hours, there is little danger of their 
becoming confused unless they should be over- 



146 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

taken by a violent storm ; and this sometimes 
occurs. 

It must not be thought that the various 
species travel separately. Of course, some of 
them do act a little selfishly in this respect, 
but many species take passage together in their 
nocturnal journeys. This has been proved by 
the fact that in a single night warblers, vireos, 
thrushes, flycatchers, and other species have 
dashed themselves to death against lighthouses 
during a storm or a dense fog. You will also 
hear many different kinds of chirpings as the 
migrants pass overhead at night. 

Some birds do not seem to go by stages in 
their migrations. One writer, who ought to be 
good authority, says that the large birds, like 
the cranes, herons, geese, brant, and the like, 
fly steadily night and day from Florida to the 
far North without rest, food, or water, and at 
a rate of speed that is almost beyond belief. 
This may be true, yet it is also a well-known 
fact that wild geese often stop at our northern 
lakes and at smaller inland bodies of water for 
rest and food, thus breaking the severe strain 
of a continuous vovage. 

Some one has asked me to tell w^hen the 
birds begin their pilgrimages. They do not all 
come or go at once. Some tarry much longer 



TRAVELS OF THE BIRDS. 14? 

than others. I will refer first to the south- 
ward-bound birds in the midsummer and au- 
tumnal procession. In my neighborhood the 
little redstarts and creeping warblers do not 
breed, but hie farther north ; yet by the mid- 
dle of August I find some of them in my wood- 
land, evidently from some higher latitude, on 
their way to their winter resorts in southern 
climes. Thus the feathered " wave " from the 
North begins quite early. It does not come 
in earnest, however, until (September, when it 
often fairly floods the woods and fields with 
warblers, vireos, sparrows, and grossbeaks, and 
by the first week in November nearly all have 
passed. 

Yet even here there are exceptions among 
the summer residents, some of which seem to 
be determined to remain in their summering 
places as long as the weather will permit. 
Some years ago, w T hen the autumn and early 
winter were especially mild, the meadow larks 
were whistling on the 30th of December, 
while a large number of song sparrows decided 
to remain all winter. And there is the myrtle 
warbler, hardiest of his family of brilliants 
in plumes, which I sometimes find about the 
woodland border during the first week in 
November. 



148 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

When do the birds arrive from the South ? 
The months of February, March, April, and 
May are the months for arrivals in our Middle 
States. I seldom fail to see the meadow larks, 
flickers, and song sparrows — and sometimes the 
towhees and fox sparrows — in February, from 
the first week to the end. During March and 
April the sparrows, thrushes, orioles, tana- 
gers, woodpeckers, vireos, flycatchers, wrens, 
and thrashers come with song and chirp, and 
the first of May brings the vast army of wood- 
warblers and a few stragglers of other guilds. 

During a visit to Louisiana in the spring of 
1894 I learned some interesting facts about the 
behavior of migrating birds. In the North the 
robins are not often found in flocks except in 
the fall when they are preparing for the voyage 
South. In Louisiana they go in large flocks dur- 
ing their winter's sojourn there, scattering out 
somewhat during the day to feed, and then 
gathering from all parts of the country at cer- 
tain favorite roosts as night approaches. They 
are especially abundant in those parts of the 
South where beechnuts are to be found. 

Thousands of them are killed by pot-hunt- 
ers in the South, their flesh being regarded as a 
delicacy. If I should eat a robin I should 
almost look upon myself as a cannibal. In the 



TRAVELS OF THE BIRDS. 149 

North there are some famous " robin roosts " in 
the autumn, as Bradford Torrey has shown in 
one of his delightful books. 

I learned, too, that the mocking bird and 
white-eyed vireo are both summer and winter 
residents of the State of Louisiana, while the 
nonpareils, indigo birds, and orchard orioles are 
only summer dwellers, going still farther South 
in winter, and the myrtle warbler is a winter 
resident, but leaves for the North in summer. 
Thus it will be seen that the subject of migra- 
tion is a rather complex one, and that there are 
birds not only of many kinds, but also of many 
minds. 



IN THE ICE-CLAD WOODS. 



First there came a light snowfall mingled 
with sleet, but soon it turned into rain which 
froze as it fell, covering trees and fences and 
roofs with a garment of ice as clear as crystal. 
What a wonderful sight the woods presented ! 
The eastern side of the tree trunks and larger 
branches was clad in a coat of mail, and every 
twig and spray was held in the embrace of a 
cold, glassy cylinder through which its shiver- 
ing form could be plainly seen. Beautiful be- 
yond description was the thick network of the 
interlacing branches and twigs imprisoned in 
transparent ice. 

What were the birds doing on a day like 
this ? That was the question I asked rdyself, 
and I could not rest satisfied until I had an- 
swered it ; so in the afternoon I stalked out to 
the woods with an eye to my feathered darlings, 
as usual. Why, of course, any one might have 
known that the first bird one should meet would 

150 



IN THE ICE-CLAD WOODS. 151 

be that " crack " tobogganist, the white-breasted 
nuthatch, the bird that dashes up and down 
the tree boles at his own sweet will, crying 
" Y^nk ! yank ! " in his confiding alto, or 
" Kick ! kick ! " in his petulant soprano as you 
approach his haunt. 

He has no fear of the blood rushing to his 
brain, for he really seems to prefer sliding down 
the trunks of the trees headfirst to hitching 
upward ; and almost always, when he wants to 
chisel out a grub or a seed from the bark, he 
stands above it and works with his head down- 
ward. No doubt he can deliver harder blows 
in that position than in any other, just as a 
woodchopper always prefers to have the stick 
of wood he is cutting on a lower plane than he 
himself occupies. But how my feathered car- 
penter does exert himself, hammering, filing, 
prying, poking, until I am afraid he will break 
off the point of his slender pickax ! He some- 
times almost jerks himself loose from the bark, 
firm a hold as he is able to take with his stout 
little claws, and one can often hear the sound 
of his pounding quite a distance away. 

On the day referred to the nuthatches per- 
formed their skating exploits on the western 
side of the trees, which were not coated with 
ice. They are unlike boys and girls in that re- 



152 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

spect. When I gently drove them to another 
tree they were careful not to fly against the 
icy side, knowing well enough that they could 
not secure a foothold there. They would some- 
times scramble along the edge of the ice as if 
strongly tempted to venture farther. No doubt 
they knew where there were some corn grains 
or sunflower seeds in the crannies of the bark, 
which they would have relished on that cold 
winter day had they been get-at-able ; but of 
course they were beyond the reach of the birds, 
though not beyond their sight, held fast be- 
neath that hard, glassy covering. Perhaps the 
nuthatches felt a little provoked, too, for their 
calls seemed to be more petulant than usual. 

And how should they be aware of the pres- 
ence of grains and seeds in the gullies of the 
bark ? Because they lay by a store of such 
supplies in the autumn for the winter's use. 
I have more than once seen them doing this. 
On that very day I had another proof, in ad- 
dition to many previous proofs, of this provi- 
dent habit, for I saw a nuthatch draw a grain 
of corn from a crevice, and then scamper about 
on the tree until he found a convenient pocket 
in which to thrust it while he picked it to 
pieces and ate it ; and this took place in the 
very depth of the woods, with no cornfield or 




The icy woods 
Nuthatches. 



12 



154 HEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

cornbin within at least a quarter of a mile. 
Of course, that nuthatch, or one of its brothers 
or cousins, had stowed away that grain of corn 
a few months before, just for such a time of 
need as this. 

In the autumn I made a little discovery 
which led me to add another item to the nut- 
hatch's rather varied bill of fare. I was watch- 
ing a couple of these birds hopping about on 
the leafy ground, or pecking vigorously at some 
dainty on the tree trunks. Fixing my eye on 
one of the latter, I approached the place where 
he was feeding, and found in a cranny of the 
bark a cracked hickory -nut shell with part of 
the kernel pecked out. I had driven the little 
diner-out away from his repast before he had 
finished it, for which act of rudeness he berated 
me roundly, little malapert, as I doubtless de- 
served. Then, to my surprise, I noticed that 
the crevices of the bark contained many of 
these broken shells rifled of their " goodies." 
Some boy or man — or perhaps it was a squir- 
rel — had been cracking hickory nuts at that 
place in the woods, and the nuthatches were 
having a jolly feast on the leavings. 

You must not suppose, however, that the 
nuthatches were the only birds at my elbow on 
the day of my tramp in the icy woods. Just 



IN THE ICE-CLAD WOODS. 155 

as familiar and engaging were the crested tits, or 
chickadees, though they did not behave in the 
same way._ It is true, they sometimes clung 
to the upright trunks and branches, and now 
and then even ambled upward a few feet, but 
they are naturally perchers, not creepers. What 
surprised me on that day was the skill and ease 
with which they flitted about among the twigs, 
grasping the icy perches with their bare little 
claws as if they were not cold or slippery. Very 
seldom did they lose their footing, though such 
a mishap would sometimes occur, when a bird 
miscalculated his distance, or flew to a branch 
that was too large for his claws to twine around. 
Then he would slip, and there would follow an 
amusing scramble for another foothold. 

Several of these hardv winter birds seemed 
to enjoy prancing around on the snow-covered 
ground. One of them made a pretty picture 
as he crept into a small tuft of grass to find 
a tidbit of some kind, only his flicking tail 
which extended out of the aperture, being 
visible. He made me think of an Eskimo 
creeping on all fours into his snow hut, and I 
could not help wishing an artist were there 
to paint the picture from life. I do not wish 
to seem conceited, but it seems to me that art- 
ists do not do justice to the birds, because they 



156 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

almost always draw r them in the same stilted, 
commonplace attitudes, and appear to forget 
that " variety is the spice of life " — of bird life 
as well as human life. I could suggest to art- 
ists a thousand pretty bird pictures that have 
never been drawn. 

ii. 

You may wonder what my little winter 
friend, the crested titmouse, feeds on in cold 
and stormy weather. He has a sweet tooth, 
so to speak, for so many things that there is 
little danger of his famishing. Sometimes, 
like the nuthatch, he fishes out a grain of corn 
from some cranny in the trees, where he or 
some of his kin hid it in the autumn. Then 
he places it under his claws on a limb, and 
daintily nibbles at it or vigorously pounds it 
to pieces. If he can find an acorn, he disposes 
of it in the same way, tearing off the shell and 
eating the kernel. 

There are also the dogwood berries, of 
which he scales off the rind and pulp, and 
then contrives spmehow to split the pits in tw T o 
and eat the small kernels within. The ground 
beneath the dogwood trees is often strewn 
with these broken shells. He w T ill also dine 
on the cocoon of a caterpillar or other worm 



W THE ICE-CLAD WOODS. 157 

if lie can find it among the dead leaves, either 
on the trees or on the ground, and a great time 
he often has breaking open the tough shell in 
which the worm has encased itself. Nor does 
he disdain to eat weed seeds when hunger 
drives him to use them for diet. The kernels 
of hickory nuts and walnuts, if he can man- 
age to get them, are also a favorite dish with 
our hungry little titmouse. 

As I continued my walk farther on in the 
woods, I was saluted by the crested chicka- 
dee's dainty cousin, the black-capped titmouse 
or tomtit, a rare little beau which enlivens 
my neighborhood all winter, no matter how 
severe the weather. He and his fellows were 
scurrying about on the snowy ground, hunt- 
ing for seeds, forgetting, it seemed, that their 
feet were bare and their carpet icy cold. If 
one only knew how one could make a pair of 
tiny socks for his feet, and could induce him 
to wear them ! But I suppose he would de- 
cline them with scorn, declaring that he was 
no tenderfoot, and that the hose manufacturers 
might become bankrupt for all he cared. 

The tomtits flitted about among the ice- 
clad twigs, twining their claws around them 
without fear of chilblains. Occasionally they 
would slip a little, but by the aid of their wings 



158 



NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 



would soon recover their balance. Yet they 
seemed to utter their disgust at such treacher- 
ous perches by impatient chirps. One of them 
flew to the bole of a dogwood sapling, and 




The chickadee's winter breakfast. 

clinging there almost like a nuthatch, thrust his 
bill into a small hole in the bark and tried to 
pry and pick out a toothsome morsel of some 
kind. He worked with so much zest that he 
deserved success, whether he won it or not. 



IN THE ICE-CLAD WOODS. 159 

The conduct of the downy woodpeckers — 
drum majors of the woods — w T as odd. They 
seemed to have a spite at the ice, for they 
cluitg to the slender branches and hammered 
away as if their life depended upon their ef- 
forts, making the icy particles fly in all direc- 
tions. No ; they would not be outwitted by 
the ice in that way and cheated of their din- 
ner, but wherever they could see a juicy grub 
or bud beneath the crystal coating they would 
chisel their way to it with their stout beaks. 
Only once or twice they hammered on the 
boles of the trees where there was no covering 
of ice. 

These woodpeckers are very reckless tilters 
and climbers, hurling themselves from tree to 
tree with break-neck swiftness, very often as if 
it mattered not where they alight. It was 
quite amusing to watch them dash about and 
attempt to catch with their claws at a slippery 
limb, lose their hold, and then scramble wildly 
for another perch. 

The next morning at nine o'clock the sky 
cleared and the sun shone brightly. If you 
could have seen the woods then, clad in gleam- 
ing crystal, you would have clapped your 
hands with delight. The various colors that 
flashed from the icy knobs and prisms and 



160 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

cylinders presented a picture that was simply 
wonderful. Looking through my opera glass 
at nearly a right angle with the sun's rays, I 
could see, flashing back from various points or 
facets, pure crystal, gleaming silver, sparkling 
gold, bright yellow, purple, pink, pale yellow, 
greenish yellow, crimson, and I know not how 
many other colors, all of them glimmering like 
twinkling stars. No queen ever wore so rich 
a display of diamonds as were worn that morn- 
ing by every bush and branch. 

I said in the first part of this chapter that 
artists do not study variety of attitude and 
position in making their pictures of birds as 
much as they should. A song sparrow sat in 
the midst of a clump of wild rose bushes by 
the side of the lane. Every gracefully curved 
stem was encased in its robe of ice, making 
the thicket look as if it were spangled with 
pearls and diamonds and gems. Was ever a 
bird surrounded with such wealth and glory ? 
It was a scene worthy of the deftest hand that 
ever wielded a brush, but I fear it will remain 
unpainted save by my poor, scrawling pen. 

My mind was somewhat divided between 
the birds and the beauty of the scene around 
me ; but still I saw a nuthatch fly from one tree 
and try to alight on the icy side of another. Of 



IN THE ICE-CLAD WOODS. 161 

course he could not cling there, for his claws 
would not penetrate the ice, which was still 
very hard, and so he was forced to clamber to 
another perch. But what were those birds flit- 
ting about me so airily ? They were the jolly 
juncos, or snowbirds, which, to my surprise, I 
had failed to see at all on the previous day. 
Where could they have been ? Not one had 
been seen, while to-day I found several bevies 
of them in various parts of the woods, as fear- 
less as ever of my presence. Yet another fact 
was not less puzzling. You may remember 
that yesterday I found the tomtits and downy 
woodpeckers here in abundance, but to-day 
they are nowhere to be found, look as I may. 
The appearances and disappearances of many 
species of birds are quite perplexing to the stu- 
dent of their habits. 



A BOYS' BIKD EVENING. 

SOME QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT BIRDS 
AND THEIR HABITS. 

One of my pleasantest evenings was spent 
some time ago with the boys of a local associa- 
tion. The superintendent, who is interested in 
the mental development of the members of his 
department, had asked me to talk to the boys 
on " Fly-aways " — meaning the migratory birds. 
Instead of delivering a formal lecture, I spoke 
in a familiar way, frequently interjecting a 
question as I proceeded with my descriptions. 
This method succeeded in keeping the class 
wide-awake ; indeed, they seemed to be on the 
tiptoe of expectation, not knowing at what mo- 
ment one of my questions would be projected 
into their camp. 

This leads me to remark, by way of paren- 
thesis, that the Socratic method seems to be 
best adapted to giving instruction to restless 

162 



A BOYS' BIRD EVENING. 163 

boys and girls — which suggestion I throw out 
as a hint to lecturers in general. 

The urchins before me were bright and 
alert Both what they did know and what 
they did not know about our common birds 
caused me not a little surprise. One of my in- 
terrogatories was : " How many kinds of spar- 
rows do you know ? " The answers were varied 
and contradictory. Some said only one, mean- 
ing the English sparrow ; some said two, and 
one plucky little fellow declared, " I've seen 
three different kinds, but I think there are 
more." The only species familiar to many 
members of the class was that foreigner, the 
English sparrow ; and so there was no little 
surprise when I told them of the long list of 
charming American sparrows, which sing so 
beautifully, and whose manners are very differ- 
ent from those of the ill-bred redcoats. Their 
eyes fairly bulged with wonder while I called 
the muster roll of song sparrows, chipping spar- 
rows, field sparrows, vesper sparrows, grass- 
hopper sparrows, fox sparrows, white-throated 
and white-crowned sparrows, and others ; and 
perhaps some of my young listeners resolved 
to use their eyes to better effect thereafter. 

Another query proved that they had not 
been asleep all the time, even if they had 



164 NEWS FEOM THE BIRDS. 

been caught napping on the sparrow question. 
"How many of you know the bluebird from 
the blue jay ? " Quite a number of hands went 
up. 

"Name some of the points of difference," 
was the next proposition. Promptly came one 
answer, " The jay has a crest and the bluebird 
hasn't." Then other responses rang out in 
quick succession : " The jay is much the larger 
bird ; " " The wings and tail of the jay are 
spangled with white, which is not the case with 
the bluebird ; " " The bluebird has a brick-red 
breast ; " " Their bills are very different," etc. — 
all of which proved that the lads had been 
making distinctions whether they had been 
conscious of it or not. 

When I asked the boys whether the small 
birds performed their migratory journeys in the 
daytime or at night, the quick response was, 
" In the daytime ; " an error that had to be cor- 
rected. The correction created not a little sur- 
prise, and no doubt some of the urchins felt 
skeptical about the truth of my statement. 
Of course, the proofs had to be forthcoming. 
What were they ? 

1. You may often hear the chirping of the 
feathered voyagers overhead at night during 
the migrating season. 



A BOYS' BIRD EVENING. 165 

2. Migrants are often seen flying in the illu- 
mined area of a lighthouse, especially during a 
fog or a storm, and sometimes many of them 
dasE against the building itself and are killed 
or disabled. 

3. By means of a telescope birds have often 
been seen crossing the disk of the moon at 
nisvht. 

4. Birds that are not seen at all one day 
are often found in great abundance early the 
next morning. 

Of the last fact I gave a concrete example 
by way of illustration. One spring I spent a 
whole day rambling about in the fields and 
woods within a mile of my home, and did not 
see a single meadow lark, nor hear a song. 
The next morning at peep of dawn, however, 
no sooner had I stepped out of my rear door 
than the shrill, wavering melody of at least a- 
score of larks greeted me, darting like musical 
arrows across the gray fields. When had the 
gay pipers come ? Certainly during the night. 

In answer to another question a bright lad 
said that the migrants perform their long jour- 
ney from the North to the South by stages. 
This was correct. A covey of birds may leave 
Ohio in the evening, fly all night, and halt the 
next morning at some favorite resort in Ken- 



166 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

tucky or Tennessee, where they may remain a 
few days, or even a couple of weeks, feeding 
on seeds, berries, and insects, until a cold wave 
from the North warns them that the time has 
come to resume their pilgrimage toward the 
Southland. 

When I interrogated the boys as to the ex- 
tent of the birds' travels, they were somewhat 
nonplussed, but very anxious to have their curi- 
osity gratified. So I explained that some spe- 
cies of migrants spend the winter in the south- 
ern part of the United States, others wander 
into Mexico, others to Yucatan, Central Amer- 
ica, Costa Rica, Colombia, and even as far as 
Peru and Brazil. Quite a number winter on 
the Bahama Islands, the Florida Keys, and the 
West Indies. If we could only follow them in 
their travels, and study their interesting con- 
duct in all places and in every season ! Among 
our most "traveled " birds are the curlews, two 
species of w r hich, the Hudsonian and Eskimo, 
breed in summer in the Arctic regions, and 
often range in winter as far south as Patagonia. 
What globe flyers they are ! Even our com- 
mon little spotted sandpiper sometimes goes on 
a winter jaunt to Brazil, where, not to make a 
paradox, he finds perpetual summer. 

At the World's Fair I visited the Costa Rica 



A BOYS' BIRD EVENING. 167 

building, and found there an excellent collec- 
tion of mounted birds. A scientific young 
Costa Rican, who was in some way connected 
with a national museum and whom I found to 
be very scholarly, told me some interesting facts 
about the avian life of his native country. The 
collection contained many of the members of 
our own avi-fauna. 

" These birds/' he said, in reply to my ques- 
tion, " are winter residents in my country. 
When spring comes they leave us, and fly 
across the gulf to this land." 

"How do they spend their time in your 
country ? " I inquired. 

" Oh, they flit about in the woods and fields, 
feeding and chirping," he replied, with a smile. 
" No, they do not sing — or at least they sing 
very little — nor do they breed. Our native 
birds, however, sing and breed in the proper 
seasons." 

Among our northern species that make 
Costa Rica their winter quarters I noted the 
cardinal grossbeak, the scarlet tanager, the 
cedar wax wing, the Baltimore oriole, and the 
robin. 

Having talked to the boys awhile and plied 
them with numerous questions, I in turn gave 
them a chance to catechize me, little think- 



168 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

ing that their minds were literally teaming 
with interrogation points. I had my hands 
full, I assure yon, answering all their sharp 
inquiries. Get a boy started, and he can ask 
more questions than the astutest ornitholo- 
gist can answer, let alone one who makes no 
pretensions to great wisdom. One of the first 
questions was, u Why do the migrants fly at 
night ? " 

" A very pertinent question," I replied. 
" Let us see whether you yourselves can not 
think of some of the reasons. Put on your 
study caps." 

Up went several hands, and the following 
were the answers elicited : The heat is not so 
intense at night ; there is not so much danger 
from hawks and gunners ; by traveling at 
night the birds can feed during the day ; there 
is no temptation to loiter by the way when 
they can not see the country below them. 

" Do all birds perform their migratory jour- 
neys at night ? " was the substance of one 
boy's question. " No," was the reply. " The 
w T ater birds fly during the day as well. You 
have often seen a flock of wild geese or ducks 
overhead." 

" How far north do the birds go for the 
summer ? " 



A BOYS' B1ED EVENING. 169 

Some species go very far. Even some of 
our tiny warblers are found in Greenland. 
Many birds rear their young during the brief 
summer within the limits of the Arctic circle. 
Travelers who have penetrated farthest to 
the North report that flocks of wild geese are 
still seen pressing their lonely flight toward the 
pole. Whether they really find an open polar 
sea is only a matter of speculation and surmise. 

Another sharp questioner led me to explain 
the " gathering of the clans" preparatory to 
migration. One fair April day I was rambling 
along on an old canal that cuts its way through 
an extensive marsh south of the Mississippi 
River, opposite the city of New Orleans, when 
a promiscuous chattering reached my ear. 
Pressing my way through the tangle of bushes 
and weeds, I soon discovered a large company 
of red-winged blackbirds perched in a clump 
of small trees, evidently holding a session of 
senate to discuss their prospective journey to 
their Northern summer habitat. It was pre- 
cisely like the councils they hold in the North 
in autumn a little before taking the air line 
route for the South. In northern Alabama, a 
few weeks later, a flock of male bobolinks 
were assembled in a noisy synod, obviously for 
the same purpose. 

13 



170 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

One of the boys of my bird class wanted 
to know whether all the birds go South in 
winter. At once a number of hands were 
raised, and some one replied in the negative ; 
at least the English sparrows do not leave. 
Expanding a little on the subject, I explained 
that the habits of the various species were 
dissimilar. Some species push far to the North 
in summer and far to the South in winter, and 
never make our central latitudes their dwelling 
place. Others are summer residents, others 
winter residents, and others all-the-year-round 
residents in our Central States. Let us take 
some concrete cases. The brown thrasher 
comes from the South in the spring and re. 
turns to the South in the autumn ; the hermit 
thrush is only a migrant, going northward to 
breed and southward to spend the winter ; the 
tufted titmouse remains summer and winter; 
while the tree sparrow comes from the North 
in autumn and hies back to the North on the 
arrival of spring. There are also species that 
never come so far south as the latitude of 
southwestern Ohio, and many species that 
never come so far north. Of the former we 
might mention the Canada jay, the great north- 
ern shrike, the Bohemian waxwing, and the 
spruce hen ; of the latter, the summer tanager, 



A BOYS* BIRD EVENING-. 1?1 

the boat-tailed grackle, the brown-headed nut- 
hatch, and the red-cockaded woodpecker. 

My boys became so interested that I could 
scarcely bring our colloquy to a close. We 
must have spent an hour and a half together. 
They asked some rather puzzling questions, as, 
for example : How long do birds live ? Why 
don't the migrants breed in the South ? What 
causes them to press north in the spring ? How 
do they find their way and keep the right di- 
rection in their nocturnal flights ? To these I 
made answer as best I could. 



BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 



If Chattanooga, Term., and its environments 
are rich in reminders of military conquest, 
they are also rich in lore of a more irenic 
nature, especially the kind for which the bird 
lover is ever on the alert. You will no longer 
hear the stirring music of fife'and drum leading 
brave boys in blue and gray into the fierce on- 
set ; but you will hear the reveille of the Caro- 
lina wren and the clear bugle of the Baltimore 
oriole on almost every historic field. An en- 
thusiast can not help wondering what the birds 
were doing on those autumn days when the 
armies met, and the crack and boom of artil- 
lery rent the air, and the groans of the wounded 
and dying filled in every lull of the strife. 
What did the birds think of such butchery on 
the part of the liege lords of creation ? Did 
they question man's right to be in the van of 
the animal kingdom ? One might even wonder 
whether the birds now singing so cheerfully 

172 



B1KDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 173 

on these battlefields preserve any traditions of 
that era of war. 

But enough of speculation. Let us come 
to actual observations. My headquarters were 
at a quiet hotel on Missionary Ridge, an al- 
most idyllic place for rest and natural history 
study and pastime. In this region the mocking 
birds are not abundant, only one pair having 
been seen, while a third songster was heard at 
a distance. On the first morning, at the peep 
of dawn, my half- wakeful slumbers were broken 
by the loud mimicry of a mocker, which, with 
his mate, annually takes up summer residence 
on the hillside below the hotel. A wonderful 
minstrel he proved to be, more limber-tongued 
and versatile, it seemed to me, than the mock- 
ers I heard, two years prior, along the Gulf 
coast in southern Mississippi. There one might 
listen to eight or ten mockers singing simul- 
taneously, while here my jolly vocalist had the 
field all to himself for exercise in imitative 
gymnastics. This fact may account for his ap- 
parent superiority over southern rivals. It is 
possible, too, that those birds which are more 
hardy and therefore more strong throated, 
migrate farther north with the advent of 
spring. 

Be that as it may, this mocker is worthy 




crt 



eg 
c3 



BIRDS AKD BATTLEFIELDS. 175 

of more than a mere casual notice. He was 
an aviary in himself. His vocal performances 
deserve analysis, for they were little short of 
marvelous. His throat seemed to be a living 
phonograph. Again and again I bent my ear 
on his song, and am disposed to announce that 
almost, perhaps quite, every note he struck 
was an imitation of one of his fellow-minstrels 
in feathers. None of his music seemed to be 
original. A wholesale plagiarist he, boldly pro- 
claiming his theft to all the world. Mockers 
in cages are apt to imitate various other sounds, 
such as the tones of a piano, a dinner horn, or 
a tooting locomotive, and I have been told of 
one that would whistle the tune of Home, 
Sweet Home ; but the minstrel of Missionary 
Eidge, in the free out of doors, confined his 
mimicry solely to the songs and calls of other 
birds, disdaining, it would appear, to borrow 
from the human world. 

As a copyist of his fellow-lyrists he was an 
adept. His superior I have never heard. The 
skill with which he wove together the various 
songs of the birds of the neighborhood and 
made them homogeneous was as wonderful as 
it was amusing. The strains of the Carolina 
wren seemed to be his special favorites. Many 
a time in quick succession he would roll from 



176 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

his limber tongue four different songs and two 
and even three alarm-calls of the wren, getting 
in all the details with the utmost precision. It 
was evident that he had studied these wren 
lays, and had practiced them until he had at 
tained perfection. Indeed, an expert orni- 
thologist would have been completely led 
astray by the imitation. More than once I 
was sure that I was listening to a wren's 
rolling notes, and was only disabused of the 
error by the succeeding strains, which pro- 
claimed the provoking mimic. The mocker's 
imitation of the various wren songs and calls 
in quick succession is all the more curious be- 
cause the wren himself seldom delivers his 
music in that way, his habit being to deliver 
one song for awhile, and then take up another. 
Our jolly mocker had quite an extensive 
repertoire. It was pleasing to hear him repeat 
the phoebe's whistle several times, and then close 
with that of the wood pewee, an order that he 
seldom failed to observe, and never reversed. 
Perhaps he mistook both songs for the produc- 
tion of one bird. He took special delight in 
delivering the loud, martial call of the tufted 
titmouse^ and also that bird's saucy chick-a-da-da, 
giving all the variations. One is almost tempted 
to say that he could whistle the cardinal gross- 



BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 177 

beak's tune more naturally than Master Gross- 
beak could do it himself. The peculiar throaty, 
semi-guttural tones of the cardinal were repro- 
duced with scientific precision. Nothing could 
have been more realistic than the mocker's deliv- 
ery of the flicker's long drawn spring challenge, 
ending in a quaver of affectionate assurance to 
his mate. Few songs are more complicated than 
that of the purple martin, but in this case the 
mocker was, as usual, equal to the emergency, 
putting in all the curves and wrinkles and gut- 
tural warblin^s. 

Besides, our vocal gymnast mimicked the 
peculiar calls of the red-headed woodpecker, 
the " mew " of the catbird, the labial " zip " of 
the brown thrasher, the alarm calls of the wood 
thrush and the robin, the robin's "cheerily, 
cheerily," the catbird's medley, and the " bob- 
white " of the partridge. A slight explanation 
is necessary in connection with the last-named 
bird's call. The mocker never produced the 
first syllable, " bob," but only the second, 
" white," just as if he had heard the call at 
a distance, and had not caught the first part. 
Why he should omit that, and yet imitate the 
second syllable with perfect accuracy, is an 
unsolved avian problem. No doubt it was 
puzzling to " Bob " himself. 



178 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

Another question to which I could not find 
a satisfactory reply was this : When did the 
mocker take his meals ? He began to sing be- 
fore break of day, and his was the last voice 
heard in the gloaming, and all the intervening 
hours were musically employed. Even at night 
his voice often rang out in the darkness and 
partially waked me. Sometimes, however, he 
would leap straight up into the air and almost 
turn a somersault, never pausing in his song. 
Perhaps he caught an insect on the fly at such 
times, and thus got something for his maw. In 
flying from one perch to another he w^ould con- 
nect the two with a festoon of song. Once he 
repeated two songs and one alarm call of the 
Carolina wren while making a rather lengthy 
aerial journey from the ridge of a roof to a 
telegraph pole. 

One more eccentricity of this feathered 
genius must be noted. It was unaccountable 
that he never imitated the songs of some very 
conspicuous feathered lyrists of the place. 
Among them were the wood thrush, the 
indigo bird, the chipping and bush spar- 
rows, the summer tanager, the brown thrasher, 
and the yellow-breasted chat. How much I 
wished he would try his vocal gifts on some 
of these birds' songs ! If one could only have 



BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 179 

suggested to him to enlarge his musical sphere ! 
It was certainly curious that he gave the calls 
of the wood thrush and the brown thrasher, 
but never reproduced their songs. 

There is danger that all other feathered 
songsters will suffer in comparison with the 
mocker's splendid efforts. He seems so supe= 
rior to all his rivals. A catbird's song on the 
same hillside seemed very tame, almost insipid. 
And yet in a wooded hollow, out of hearing of 
the jolly mimic, a catbird executed some ex- 
quisite runs that for sweetness and flow were 
superior to any tones produced by the hillside 
minstrel. They had a deliciously human in- 
tonation, as if the bird were uttering a senti- 
ment; and no doubt he was, for he would re- 
turn to them again and again. The technique 
of the song was excellent It was with no little 
pleasure that I said to myself : " It is enchant- 
ing music, and all original, too ! " With all his 
sly ways, the catbird is too honest to pirate an- 
other bird's song, although in Virginia I once 
heard one give a perfect imitation of the whip- 
poor-will's nocturnal lay. Perhaps it was only 
fancy, but it appeared to me that the catbirds 
sang more sweetly in this battle-renowned re- 
gion than elsewhere. 

In a few hours' rouble over a neighbor- 



180 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

ing height I found the charming little prairie 
warbler, with his bright yellow robe and black 
stripes on his sides and cheeks. He is a dainty 
birdlet, and his trill is a slender line of quiver- 
ing sunshine swinging to and fro like a tiny 
pendulum. Sometimes he repeats a straight 
trill, slightly ascending in the scale ; at other 
times his song is divided into two or three syl- 
lables. There is a peculiar intoning about his 
trills that distinguishes them from other war- 
blers' rondeaus. There are times when they re- 
semble somewhat the trill of the chippie, though 
they have a more musical quality. No warblers, 
save the yellow-breasted chats, were so abundant 
among the mountains of Tennessee, and yet they 
are called prairie warblers. I have never seen 
them anywhere except in mountainous districts, 
which shows that even in the bird world names 
are sometimes misnomers. 

One of the quaintest birds found here 
was the white-eyed vireo, his saucy outbursts 
sounding so much like a challenge to com- 
bat. No syllables can represent these songs, 
if songs they can be called. They seem to 
be a disjointed succession of notes delivered 
with so much labored effort that it threatens 
to tear the minstrel's larynx to shreds. One 
seen on the bushy side of a hill sang one 



BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 181 

tune awhile, then another, and did not allow 
me to leave the place until he had shown me 
that he could sing at least four tunes. 

Part of his strain is a kind of gurgle, as if 
he might have just taken a drink of some- 
thing a little more potent than water. As a 
rule, he closes each run with an emphatic note 
cut off short, often with the rising inflection. 
His little white eyeballs are not for nothing. 
They are bristling with interrogation and ex- 
clamation points. There are times when, hid- 
den in a bush, the white-eye will engage in a 
wild chattering, tumbling his notes over one 
another in such odd chaos that you feel sure 
there must be several birds engaged in a melee. 
This performance is a genuine bird racket. 

What a haunting song is that of Bachman's 
sparrow ! He is peculiar to the South. On 
Chickamauga battlefield, now a national park, 
one of these birds was singing in an almost 
magical way, with a touch of sadness in his 
tones, as if he were rehearsing an elegy for the 
heroes slain over thirty years ago. No doubt 
his forbears sans; the same tunes in the same 
place during the trying times of the "cold and 
cruel war/' On the hillsides sloping down from 
General Bragg's tower on Missionary Eidge, the 
Bachman sparrows were lavish of song. They 




o 



s 

o 



BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 183 

allowed me to approach, them closely, and as I 
sat in the shadow of a small tree, one of them 
poured forth his quivering, swinging lays — a 
sort of votive incense to old memories. In a 
country where the song sparrow, so abundant 
and tuneful in the North, is not seen or heard 
— at least not in the spring — it is well to have 
his place supplied by this plainly clad but sil- 
very voiced little triller. 

ii. 

A few hours were spent in the National 
Cemetery, where thirteen thousand soldiers lie 
buried. It is a beautiful place, with its green, 
closely mown lawns, white headstones on the 
slopes, and many shade trees. A list of all the 
birds I found in this " city of the dead " may 
be of some interest : Orchard orioles, Baltimore 
orioles, summer warblers, red-eyed vireos, wood 
pewees, purple grackles, warbling vireos, chip- 
ping sparrows, English sparrows (those samples 
of ubiquity), brown thrashers, redstarts, Mary- 
land yellow throats, creeping warblers, cardinal 
grossbeaks, cuckoos, and blue-gray gnatcatchers. 
It was the 9th of May when these species were 
seen. No doubt many more, the year round, 
find this burial spot a safe retreat from their 
foes, for here no shooting of any kind would 



184 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

be allowed, although the place is a memorial 
of the destructive effects of powder and lead 
some thirty odd years ago. 

There are still some battles — or, perhaps, 
they should be called only scrimmages — fought 
in this peaceful place. Two male orchard ori- 
oles were trying to settle a little unpleasantness 
by resort to arms — or, to be more exact, to bills 
and claws. They were a matured specimen in 
his wedding dress of black and red, and a year- 
old youngster still in his swain's suit of black 
and yellow. The old bird flew down upon the 
grass and sang his rollicksome tune, and then 
flew up, meaning to find a perch in the tree ; 
but unexpectedly on his way he encountered 
his valiant young rival. The combatants closed 
in the air, and struggled and squeaked as they 
dropped to the ground, wdiere for a quarter of 
a minute or more they engaged in a set-to worthy 
of 1863, pecking and clawing, and mixing them- 
selves up in a kaleidoscopic medley of colors. 

When they parted and flitted up into the 
trees, it was the youngster who was in pursuit 
of the other. A demure maiden, the cause of 
the contest, was moving mutely about in the 
foliage, acting utterly unconcerned as to the 
issue of the battle. I call it a battle to give 
my sketch a deeper tinge of local coloring. 



BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 185 

Here during the war one of the severest en- 
gagements took place, and now my orioles 
were keeping up their mimic contests. 

Time was, the superintendent told me, when 
the air of the place was vocal with the songs of 
mocking birds ; but within the last few years 
they have disappeared entirely, evidently driven 
away by the English sparrows. " I wouldn't 
give one mocker for five hundred pesky spar- 
rows," he declared with indignant emphasis. 
An idyllic place it would be for mockers, if 
they could possess it in peace, but they are 
like most musicians — too highly organized and 
too sensitive to brook a rival who drowns out 
their melodious mimicry with his clamor. 

Among the most martial strains in this 
military atmosphere were the bugle calls of 
the Carolina wren. Still, I fancy that his 
notes were more like those of Roderick Dhu 
calling his Highland clans to arms than like 
an American bugle call, and they certainly 
bore no resemblance to the martial music of 
fife and drum. The wrens, even so early as 
the 8th and 9th of May, were feeding their 
young, which were in some cases perfectly 
fledged. Still more abundant were the rol- 
licksome chats, which were just beginning to 
build their nests. On every bushy mountain- 

14 



186 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

side their quaint, challenging calls were heard, 
and often they flew high in air and then de- 
scended by a stairway of flight, their bodies 
swinging loosely, as if suspended on their up- 
raised wings, while they shrieked all sorts of 
menaces at an intruder. 

One afternoon a couple of lads and myself 
clambered down the steep, rocky side of Look- 
out Mountain. That was more sport than go- 
ing down by the prosaic incline, which was 
the stereotyped route. We began our descent 
through a gorge that runs down steeply be- 
tween Sunset and Snake Rocks, and thus we 
got a view of those terrific precipices from be- 
low instead of only from above, as most people 
do — people of the mediocre type, you see ! A 
blood-red summer tanager tilting over the rocks 
is a thrilling, almost a blood-curdling sight, mak- 
ing one glad that Nature has made the bird a 
natural flying machine. 

On the summit of the mountain the birds 
were not plentiful. A few chippies, red-eyed 
vireos, and summer tanagers formed the com- 
plement. May I venture to guess the reason of 
this scarcity? Perhaps the want of water on 
the heights will partly^explain it, as no small 
amount of effort would be required even for a 
bird to make the journey down the mountain, 



BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 187 

and especially up again, for drinking and bath- 
ing purposes. Having no elevators, they find 
it too irksome and inconvenient to live on the 
upper story of a mountain flat. At all events, 
there were many more feathered folk in the 
valley than on the mountain. 

In the neighborhood of the famous " battle 
in the clouds," where General Hooker made 
his gallant charge, I had an agreeable surprise. 
Glancing up into the foliage of a tall tree, my 
eye caught the glint of a patch of brilliant red 
among the leaves. What could it be ? I was 
puzzled for a moment. It really looked like a 
blood-stain, and for a moment the place seemed 
a little uncanny. But my opera glass soon told 
me that the gleaming spot was the carmine 
shield worn by the rose-breasted grossbeak, of 
which I had accidentally caught sight through 
an aperture of the leaves. Presently this bril- 
liant bird's mate appeared on the scene, and 
together they swung gracefully down the ac- 
clivity. I warrant you that no officer of the 
army in 1863 was more gorgeously accoutered 
than that grossbeak. This was the 8th of 
May, and these feathered travelers were en 
route for their summer home in the North. 

Along the foot of the mountain, on the 
bushy steeps and the thicket-fringed banks of 



188 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

the Tennessee River, there was a-plenty of 
singing and chirping. Here were the yellow- 
breasted chats, the summer warblers, the cat- 
birds, the Maryland yellowthroats, the indigo 
birds, the cardinal grossbeaks, the white-eyed 
and red-eyed viroes, the chippies, and some 
others. In the tanglewood that bordered a 
small stream there was a deluge of bird music 
pouring mostly from the throat of catbirds and 
cardinals, who were bringing the day to a fit- 
ting close with their jubilant vespers. 

A Bachman's sparrow acted oddly over on 
another slope. It sprang up from the ground, 
and flitted among some blackberry bushes, 
and then darted across a road and sat on the 
ground, uttering a nervous sound, which seemed 
like chirping and singing combined. Breath- 
lessly I sought for a nest, for that is the man- 
ner of many birds when they are disturbed in 
their breeding ; but no nest could be found. 
It was queer that a bird should behave itself 
in that way when there was no cause. Pres- 
ently two sparrows were seen, doubtless a male 
and a female, and in a few minutes one of them 
sat on a perch and sang most exquisitely. 

Yet their conduct was no more enigmatical 
than that of a pair of creeping warblers in the 
woods near by. The little dame was sitting in 



BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 189 

a leafy tree preening her feathers, while the 
male barely gave me a glimpse of himself be- 
fore he scuttled away. For a long time I 
watched her arranging her toilet, and there 
seemed to be every evidence that she had come 
from a nest. Suddenly she flitted to another 
twig, rearranged a feather daintily, and then 
darted down into a small thicket of blackberry 
bushes. A nest, I felt sure. After waiting 
a while to let her get settled on the supposed 
nest, I cautiously crept near. She flew down 
on the dead leaves, where she held herself side- 
wise, her feathers fluffed up, her wings out- 
spread and drooping, and her head canted 
oddly to one side, as if she were looking down 
at something of intense interest to herself. 

Slipping away again, I waited for a quarter 
of an hour, and then returned to the thicket, 
moving slowly and quietly. As I bent over 
the bushes, I heard the bird flutter up from the 
leaves, and fly chirping away. Sure of a nest, 
I sought for one among the leaves for a long 
time, but in vain. When I returned to the 
place some three hours later, no bird and no 
nest were to be seen. It struck me that the 
creepers and sparrows just described had gone 
into a conspiracy to mystify me. 

Much more satisfactory was my quest on a 



190 NEWS FEOM THE BIRDS. 

steep hillside a little later. A bush sparrow 
flew up from the ground, chirping uneasily, 
and there, snugly set in the bushes, was her 
pretty nest containing four bantlings over half 
grown. A catbird's domicile farther up the hill 
contained only one egg. 

Brown thrashers were not plentiful about 
Chattanooga, perhaps not more than a half 
dozen having been seen in my strolls ; nor 
were these especially musical. Near the hotel 
where the mocker had domiciled himself a 
thrasher occasionally made a half-hearted at- 
tempt to sing, but apparently the superior per- 
formances of his rival disconcerted him, and he 
seemed to give up in disgust. 

Not a song sparrow was seen or heard in 
all this region. About my home in Ohio 
every piece of low ground has its quota of 
song sparrows, often trilling every month in 
the year. It was an unusual experience to fol- 
low the winding hollows and crystal streams 
in Tennessee without being greeted by a trill 
from the throats of these merry songsters. 
Yet I have no doubt that these birds pass 
through here in the migrating season both in 
the spring and the autumn ; for, one day in 
November, I found several of them near Mont- 
gomery, Alabama. And they were singing, 



BIKDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 



191 



too, to be sure ! Otherwise they would not 
have been true to song-sparrow tempera- 
ment. 

Tennessee, however, has Bachman's spar- 
row, trilling his sweet- 
ly sad refrains on ev- 
ery hillside, and that 
makes partial compen- 
sation for its lack of 
our Northern lyrist. 
While I should not 
be willing to exchange 
the song sparrow for 
Bachman's, no doubt 
there are persons 
who would pass 
verdict in fa- 
vor of the lat- 
ter bird as the 
superior triller. 
The wood thrush- 
— they could tell 
you many a sylvan secret — 
were quite abundant, their 
sweet, pensive melody falling from the steep 
mountain sides like the tinkle of half-muffled 
bells. The orchard orioles were oftener seen 
than their Baltimore cousins, but wherever the 




Oriole and nest. 



192 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

latter were, they failed not to make their pres- 
ence known by their cheerful piping. 

One evening I was greatly puzzled by the 
strange calling — it was half whistle, half call — 
of a bird down the slope from Bragg's tower. 
Never had I heard a bird call like that. Ex- 
pecting to find some rare species, I approached 
the jolly piper on tiptoe, so to speak, when, 
lo ! it turned out to be only a Baltimore oriole, 
one of my best-known birds. I am aware that 
Master Oriole is a vocal trickster, but I never 
expected an old friend to lead me so completely 
astray. 



SOME CTTKIOUS NESTS. 

Nature lias performed some odd freaks in 
the way of architecture, and it has seemed to 
me that a description of some of the most 
curious bird nurseries in various parts of the 
world would be interesting to my readers. 

In this country we have a little ovenbird, 
which makes a grassy ball on the ground 
among the leaves or weeds, with a small hole 
at the side for a door. But in South America 
there is an ovenbird which has a still clearer 
title to the name, for it makes an oven of clay, 
and places it on trees or window sills, so that 
the under side is flat, while the upper part is 
round like a mound. At one side there is a 
small doorway, like the entrance to an Eskimo 
hut ; and, still stranger than all, the interior is 
divided by a partition into two rooms, in one 
of which the female lays her eggs and rears 
her young. In building the nest the birds 
bring their material in little mud balls, which 
they work into the walls. They are quite 

193 



194 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

tame, often coming near human residences to 
build their nests. They work rapidly, some- 
times beginning and completing their nests in 
two days. 

Another fine architect among birds is the 
fairy martin — also a worker in clay like the 
bird just named. It kneads its mortar through 
its bill, mixing it with its own saliva so as to give 
it a soft and sticky character. This kneading 
is done before the clay is carried to the nest. 
It is said that six or seven birds will work at 
one time at a single nest without getting into 
a jangle, one of them remaining at the nest as 
builder w^hile the rest act as hodcarriers, 
bringing the building material as fast as she 
needs it. When the weather is dry they work 
at their nests only in the morning and evening, 
because during the remainder of the day the 
sun is so hot that it dries the mortar too 
rapidly to be kneaded with ease. The out- 
side of the nest is quite rough, but the interior 
is very smooth, lined with feathers and fine 
grass. It is made in the shape of a flask, the 
larger end being fastened to a wall while the 
body of it extends outward, and is often bent 
slightly downward, the opening being at the 
smaller end. 

There is a rare little bird in far-off Austra- 



SOME CUKIOUS NESTS. 195 

lia, called the dicaeum, which is a deft weaver. 
It makes a purselike nest, which is suspended 
from branches and twigs, around which the 
supporting fibers are wound. The entrance to 
this dangling little homestead is at the side, 
from which you can see the dainty sitting 
bird's head projecting. The nest looks as if 
it were made of white cotton cloth, but is 
really composed of soft, cottony down gathered 
from the seed vessels of certain plants. 

No birds build more dainty and beautiful 
nests than the various species of humming 
birds. The male carries the material to the 
site, and the female does the constructing. 
Lichens are mostly used, and are skillfully 
braided together, the spaces between the 
parts being filled with the bird's saliva, which 
is of- viscid quality. The inside is padded 
with 'the silky fibers of certain kinds of plants. 
The sites selected are often quite wonderful ; 
sometimes the nest is suspended on a leaf, or 
on the side of a slender branch ; sometimes it 
is placed on the upper side of a horizontal 
bough ; then it may be hung on a bundle of 
rushes, or fastened to the thatched roof of a 
settler's cottage. 

You have often heard of that skillful little 
nest maker, the tailor bird. Well does it de- 



196 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

serve its name. Perhaps you have seen pic- 
tures of its nest. It will select two broad 
leaves not far apart, and stitch the edges 
together with a thread w r hich it has spun of 
cotton. The stitching is done with its bill 
used as a needle. The leaves thus bound 
together form a sort of pocket into which the 
little tailor throws some soft, downy material, 
slightly hollowed at the top for a nest. Some- 
times only one leaf is used, if it is large enough, 
the two edges being brought together and 
stitched. 

The English blackbird and lapwing, after 
building a nest of grasses and fibers, surround 
it with a kind of cement which holds the walls 
firm. There are some birds which scratch to- 
gether a heap of leaves, making a sort of hot- 
bed, on which they lay their eggs, and let them 
hatch by the heat produced by the decaying 
substances. Some of the grebes and rails drag 
from the sides and bottoms of streams frag- 
ments of water plants of which they form a 
rude, half-floating mass piled on the water- 
weeds. On this they sit, the eggs being 
hatched partly by the heat of their bodies and 
partly by the heat generated by their queerly 
constructed nest. 

The magpie is a thief, and, like all rascally 



SOME CURIOUS NESTS. 



197 




folk, 

seems to 
suspect that 
other animals 
and birds may be 
thieves as well ; 
so she surrounds 
her nest with a 
hedge of thorns. 
Whether she ever 
pricks herself on 
them or not, I 
am unable to say. 

While the little sand martin lines her under- 
ground nest with the softest feathers she 
can find, the rude kingfisher forms a couch 
in her cellar in the bank of spiny fish-bones, 



ags ? 



Edible birds' nests. 



198 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

which she ejects in pellets from her own 
stomach. 

There are "edible birds' nests" — that is, 
nests that are good for food. The Chinese 
relish them. They are the nests of a certain 
species of swift, which makes them of a pecul- 
iar secretion of the salivary glands ; this hard- 
ens rapidly when exposed to the air, becoming 
like isinglass, and is one of the delights of John 
Chinaman. 

There are humming birds and tiny gross- 
beaks which suspend their nests by a single 
thread. But suppose the weight of the grow- 
ing youngsters within should destroy the bal- 
ance of the nest and tip it to one side, what is 
the old bird to do ? Let them dash themselves 
to death on the ground ? Oh, no ! She only 
puts some lumps of earth on the other side to 
restore the equipoise. This would be almost 
beyond belief if it were not vouched for by 
credible writers on birds and their quaint 
habits. 



THE AMERICAN QUAIL. 

While you are young and live in the 
country where you can hear the blithe whis- 
tle of the bob white and his sweet, tender 
love call, you do not need to wish yourself a 
grown person. They are among the most 
charming sounds of our rural districts, and 
after you have come to middle life or old age, 
every time you have a chance to listen to them, 
you will wish yourself a light-hearted boy or 
girl again, skipping over the green hills and 
meadows. I think if I had my life to live 
over /I should never again become discontented 
as long as I could hear those rural sounds. 

More than once, as we sat around the din- 
ner table in our old country home, we would 
suddenly hear a merry, challenging whistle 
from out of doors, and for a moment would 
look at one another doubtfully, thinking that 
some one was whistling a signal to us ; then we 
would burst into a hearty laugh, for the next 
thought told us that it was only the human- 

199 



200 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

like whistling of the bobwhite to his mates in 
the clover field beyond the lane. I say of the 
quail what Lowell has said of the dandelion : 

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee. 

The habits of the quails are well known to 
most people who live in the country, for these 
birds often start up in small bevies from the 
grass and in the woods. At such times the 
first intimation you usually have of their pres- 
ence is the loud whir of their wings as they 
start from the ground and dart away with a 
swiftness that the eye can scarcely follow. It 
is mostly in the fall and winter that they move 
about in flocks, feeding on such seeds as they 
can find on the ground ; and then when spring 
comes they divide into couples and begin to 
make their nests and rear their young. 

I have found their nests in wheat fields, in 
roughly kept new grounds, among the briers in 
old, neglected pastures, in the deep grass along 
a rail fence, and beneath a pile of rails at the 
border of the woods. Some writers say that 
the nest is quite neatly roofed over, having an 
entrance at the side, somewhat like the nest of 
the oven bird, and I do not dispute their testi- 
mony. But I have never found such a nest, 
and will say that the description corresponds 



,THE AMERICAN QUAIL. 201 

better to that of the nest of the meadow lark 
than to that of the quail, so far as my obser- 
vation goes^ All the nests I have found have 
been grassy baskets sunk into a shallow hol- 
low of the ground and completely open at 
the top. 

As many as twenty eggs are sometimes found 
in a nest, though a dozen is more likely to be 
the quota. jSuch a nest, its bottom lined with 
pearly treasures, is a beautiful sight, worthy of 
the brush of the artist. If the eggs can be 
found fresh, they are excellent for food — at 
least, such is the opinion of those who have 
the conscience to rob the nest of the quail. 

Like, the grouse and some other birds, the 
young quails are ready to leave the nest almost 
as soon as they are out of the shell, being very 
active and shy. Indeed, I have heard old har- 
vesters say that they have seen them scuttling 
through the wheat stubbles with a part of their 
shell still clinging to their backs. Sometimes 
in my rambles I stumble upon a brood of little 
ones with their mamma. How the old bird 
calls and rushes about and trails and fluffs her 
feathers until she lias warned her little ones of 
their danger ! And how they scud about and 
creep into the grass and bushes, sitting so close 
that it is next to impossible to find them ! Only 

15 




"Bobwhite." 



THE AMERICAN QUAIL. 203 

a quick glimpse of the little birds is enough to 
convince you that they are as pretty and inno- 
cent as baby birds can be. 

No wonder the quails are so wary. Full 
well do they know how fatal is the sportsman's 
gun with its charge of scattering shot that makes 
escape almost impossible. So many of their com- 
panions have been killed in this way that those 
which remain have learned to distrust mankind, 
and so they seek the most out-of-the-way nooks, 
and conceal themselves at the first approach of 
a human being. Poor things ! they must be 
constantly on their guard, and I do not see 
how their lives can be happy when they must 
always be in dread of the gunner's fatal lead. 

Audubon describes a most interesting habit 
of these birds. He says they often roost on 
the ground in the grass or beneath a bent log, 
and this is the way they go to bed: They 
arrange themselves in a circle, with their heads 
extending outward, and then they move back- 
ward, making the circle smaller, until their 
bodies almost touch, when they settle down 
and are ready for a jaunt into dreamland. But 
why do they choose such a position ? Because, 
if danger should approach, each bird can start 
up on the wing without colliding with his 
neighbors, and dash away in his own direc- 



204 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

tion. There is so much calculation in this 
habit that it is difficult to believe that the 
birds are not endowed with a fair degree of 
reason. 

However, if the quails are treated with kind- 
ness and given to understand that you will not 
harm them, they will become quite tame and 
familiar, coming even to the farmyard to feed 
with the domestic fowls. In such cases their 
ways are winsome, showing w 7 hat charming birds 
they are. A straw stack is quite a favorite re- 
sort for them in winter, where they can be seen 
eating the grains of wheat with relish. 

The eggs may be hatched with those of the 
bantam, both requiring three weeks for incuba- 
tion, and in this way quails may be reared, be- 
coming the most delightful pets. If treated 
well, they become almost as tame as the fowls 
about the house, only, of course, their powers 
of flight make it necessary to keep them in a 
coop or cage to prevent their straying away. 
A writer says that he has often caught quails 
with a lath trap in winter, and in a few hours 
they became so tame that they would freely 
eat corn and wheat dropped down to them be- 
tween the slats, and if he kept them a week 
and then gave them their freedom, instead of 
flying away never to return, they were after- 



•THE AMERICAN QUAIL. 205 

ward seen daily feeding with the hens and 
cattle in the barnyard. 

While the eggs are being laid the female 
will completely cover them with leaves to con- 
ceal them in her absence. If the leaves are dis- 
turbed by a man or animal while she is away, 
she will instantly discover the intrusion, and 
abandon the nest even if not a single egg has 
been broken or removed. She seems to dis- 
cover this by the sense of smell ; for one bird 
student removed the leaves from a nest several 
times with a pair of forceps without touching 
them with his fingers, and then put them back 
carefully, but the bird did not desert the 
nest. You see, the wind might have dis- 
turbed those sheltering leaves, and as long as 
she was not advised of the presence of a man 
by her sense of smell she did not detect any- 
thing amiss. 

There are other species of partridges in this 
country. The fact is, they comprise a very in- 
teresting family. There is the mountain par- 
tridge, which dwells on the Pacific coast from 
San Francisco to Washington. Its head is 
adorned with two arrow-shaped plumes three 
or four inches in length, and these can be 
noticed in the form of a little tuft of down 
as soon as the chick comes froin the shell. It 



206 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

is a very handsome bird, and breeds in the 
higher mountain ranges. 

An author says of the renowned California 
quail that it sometimes builds its nest in gar- 
dens not more than twenty feet from the door- 
way, and also that he found some eggs of this 
bird in a hen's nest in the barnyard. Another 
writer says that he has found several of these 
quails' nests in trees, on the end of a broken or 
decayed limb, or at the intersection of two large 
branches. A brood was hatched in a vine-cov- 
ered trellis at the front door of a school build- 
ing. A resident of California found a towhee's 
nest which contained four of its own eggs and 
two of the California quail's. This must be a 
rather whimsical bird. 

A very handsome partridge is the scaled 
or blue quail, which is found in northwestern 
Mexico, western Texas, New Mexico, and Ari- 
zona. It often chooses the most barren places 
for residence, many miles from water, so that 
it must be a kind of Arab among birds. It 
places its nest in a slight depression under a 
bush, and lines it with a few coarse grass fibers. 
It is said that the shells of the eggs are very 
thick. 

There are also the Arizona quail and the 
"fool quail " or "fool hen" of the same State, 



THE AMERICAN QUAIL. 207 

wliicli range the mountains and dry mesas of 
the West, sometimes going as high as fifty-seven 
hundred feet up the mountain slopes to build 
their nests. What a wild, wandering life they 
must lead in those desolate regions, making com- 
panions for the pioneer settlers to afford relief 
to them in their isolation ! 



A MEEEY PIPEE. 

Sometimes it is unfortunate for a bird to 
have brightly colored plumes. They make 
him a desirable pet, and so he is pursued by 
nest hunters and trappers, and often put into 
a cage for life. This is the case with our 
pretty and rollicking redbird, the cardinal 
grossbeak, whose loud whistle may be heard 
almost any day coming from the copse or the 
woods. 

He is so happy out of doors, so full of win- 
some ways, and he pipes so gayly, it seems 
strange that any one can have the heart to de- 
prive him of his liberty. How his red bosom 
must flutter with longing as he looks out from 
his wire prison at the bushy hillsides smiling 
in the sun, where he might flit about with free- 
dom and delight ! 

Perhaps you would care to know where the 
cardinal bird, as he is often called, finds a home. 
I will tell you where I have found him. Here 
in southwestern Ohio there is scarcely a woods, 

208 



A MERRY PIPER. 209 

or a copse on the hillside or in the vale, which 
does not have as presiding geniuses one or more 
pairs of these birds. In the bushy woods in 
which I have so often sauntered they may be 
found both in summer and winter. Down by 
the river and along the bush-fringed banks of 
the meandering runways they love to dwell, 
building nests in the tanglewoods and piping 
in concert with the song sparrows that hop 
and trill hard by the water's edge. 

In the northeastern part of the State I also 
met the cardinals making themselves at home 
on the steep, wooded hillsides. On a spring 
day, some years ago, I was tramping along one 
of these rocky acclivities listening to what 
might have been called a " responsive exer- 
cise," in which several cardinals on the hill- 
side and one in a cage in the village nestling 
below, were the performers. It seemed to me 
that there was a sadness, an intense yearning, 
in the tones of the piping prisoner, while a 
peculiar gayety rang in the rolling, resonant 
songs of the free birds. Was this only fancy ? 

During some rambles which I took along 
the Ohio River on the Kentucky side several 
years ago, I found the cardinals very abundant 
and very tuneful, the high hills covered with 
bushes and brambles, making almost a paradise 



210 STEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

for them. Sometimes a dozen of them could 
be heard whistling their gay love songs at the 
same time. The little Kentucky warbler sang 
in much the same strain, only with less vigor 
and variety. 

The grossbeaks were plentiful in the South 
during my visit there in the spring of 1894. 
True, there were no bushy hillsides in that re- 
gion, but in the quivering swamps, covered with 
thickly matted bushes, these birds held their 
song carnivals, and flitted about amid the foli- 
age like living studies in red. It may have 
been mere fancy, but it seemed to me that I 
never saw cardinals so brilliant of plumage as 
were the cardinals of the Louisiana swamps. 

The spring of 1897 found me pursuing my 
busy avocation in southern Mississippi, ram- 
bling along the Gulf coast intent on the study 
of avian folk. On the 27th of April a cardi- 
nal's nest containing three callow bantlings was 
found, and the next day another with three 
eggs. These nests were carefully concealed in 
the densest part of a green copse. Thus it will 
be seen that the cardinals breed in the South 
as well as in the North. It would be interest- 
ing to know whether a pair ever raise a family 
on the Gulf coast in the early spring, and then 
find some more northern summer home in which 



A MERRY PIPER. 



211 




Cardinal grossbeak. 



to rear another brood. Perhaps some enterpris- 
ing bird student will some day be able to settle 
that point, and thus add something new to our 
knowledge of birds. 

Thus it will be seen that the cardinals are 
quite widely distributed. They are also to be 
found in Florida, for a friend told me of their 
presence there, and, besides, Bradford Torrey 
in his pleasant book, A Florida Sketchbook, 



212 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

speaks of observing them in that State. It is 
rather odd that some individuals should live 
in the South all the year round, while others 
remain both summer and winter in the North, 
and others still migrate from one latitude to 
another, according to the season. You can not 
explain what it is that causes this difference, 
nor can any one ; it is simply the natural dis- 
position of some to remain at one place and of 
others to travel and " see the world." We find 
the same difference in people, some of whom 
are proverbial " globe trotters," while others 
are genuine " home bodies " by natural prefer- 
ence. 

Not seldom does the cardinal whistle his 
tunes in the winter, especially on warm, sun- 
shiny days. On the 18th of March I heard 
one's lilting whistle in the cemetery, and it 
was as gay as if the songster were in the land 
of the living instead of in " the city of the 
dead." It is hard for this gay minstrel to be 
sedate. There is nothing doleful about his 
manners or his music. 

The grossbeaks make their nests in bushes, 
sometimes in the very depths of the woods and 
often in the copses. Sometimes little effort is 
made to conceal them. One of the most sur- 
prising of my discoveries was the following: 



A MERRY PIPER. 213 

One spring a pair of catbirds made a nest in 
some bushes at the border of the woods, and 
reared their brood, and then left the little grassy 
cot, which soon became a good deal shattered. 
That summer — or the next, I can not recall 
which — I was greatly surprised to find that a 
female cardinal bird had repaired the old nest, 
straightening up the walls and adding new ma- 
terial, and was sitting on several eggs, from 
which she raised a family. 

You must not suppose that the madam is 
so brilliantly colored as her lord. Her color is 
a grayish brown, with here and there a dash of 
red. Thus she does not make so plain a mark 
for the gunner, nor is she so easily seen by her 
enemies as she sits on her nest, proving the 
w^ell-known theory of " protective coloration." 



THE CAEOLINA WEEN. 

HIS UBIQUITY YAEIETY OF HIS SONG — SOME 

TKYSTING PLACES. 

Why the jolly bird of which I wish to give 
a sketch should be called the Carolina wren is 
rather an enigma. Perhaps the naturalist who 
christened him first found him in one of the 
States for which he has been named. If so, 
it is difficult to decide which has received the 
greater compliment — the State or the bird. One 
thing is certain, the wren is not so provincial as 
his name would seem to imply. True, he can 
not be called a cosmopolite ; yet he has a wide 
range, and, considered as a species, must be 
quite a traveled personage. 

This wren is a bantam little fellow with a 
rusty brown back, somewhat striped, his lower 
parts white or tawny buff, and wings and tail 
narrowly barred with dusk. As you look at 
him, observe, too, that his somewhat long bill 
is slightly curved, and that a distinct white or 
buffy line extends back over his keen little eye. 

214 



THE CAROLINA WREN. 215 

You may fancy, on first acquaintance, that lie 
is an exact counterpart of some of his relatives ; 
but by and by you will learn to know him at 
a glance by his peculiar pose and form. Like 
most of his wren congeners, he is in the habit, 
when excited, of squatting — or " juking " — his 
little body in a comical way. 

Nature, it must be conceded, has made 
some quaint paradoxes. One can not help 
going about in her domain with one's mind 
bent in the form of an interrogation point. 
Why, for instance, has she dowered the Caro- 
lina wren with such versatile vocal resources, 
and yet put no real melody into his throat? 
Of the dozen or more tunes — if you can call 
them such — which he is capable of piping, not 
one of them can really be called melodious. 
Be it said, however, that they are not displeas- 
ing. * Some of them ring like a bugle call ; all 
of them are suggestive of breeze and stir and 
untiring activity. There is nothing pathetic 
about Carolina's songs as there is about the 
white-throated sparrow's ; nor are they ever 
desultory like the lazy, rambling minstrelsy 
of the warbling vireo. 

As a rule, Carolina pipes one strain for 
awhile, and sometimes a long while, before he 
begins another ; yet I have heard him change 



216 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

his tune four times in five minutes, as if lie 
were playing at tiltmills with his voice. You 
never can tell when you have heard all the 
sounds he is capable of producing, for every 
now and then he will surprise you with a new 
combination. Recently, long as I have been 
on familiar terms with him, he has made me 
look several times in the bushes for a cardinal 
grossbeak, only to find his versatile self. I have 
a faint suspicion that he sometimes slyly plagia- 
rizes the notes of other birds. 

It would be impossible to represent all his 
quaint songs with letters and syllables. One 
of his favorite sentiments is " Che-wish-you ! 
che-wish-you ! che-wish-you ! M usually repeat- 
ed three times and then followed by a brief 
interval of silence. Sometimes he pipes, " Bish- 
yer ! bish-yer ! " which you have leave to trans- 
late as you please. I fancy he occasionally says, 
" I- wish-you- well-sir," which is certainly quite 
considerate, and displays an unselfish spirit ; 
but when he exclaims " Chil-lil-le-lu ! " rolling 
it quaintly from his garrulous tongue, one is at 
a loss to know if the statement is true or not. 
At rare intervals he falls into an ecstasy and 
chatters a continuous lay which is just as won- 
derful as it is devoid of musical quality. 

No less quaint are the sites he chooses for 



THE CAROLINA WREN. 217 

his nests — or, perhaps, I should change the 
gender of the pronouns and say she and her. 
One nest, which I found in a quiet glen, was 
placed in a hollow of a sapling's stem, the ves- 
tibule leading down to the home nursery being 
a pretty winding way, through which, by keen 
scrutiny, the eggs could be seen. Not more 
than four rods away another nest was discov- 
ered, the next spring, under the overarching 
sod of a streamlet's bank. In going to the 
nest the little mother would flit to a branch 
in the thorn bush above, then to a dead twig 
lying on the bank in front of her domicile ; 
thence she would glance up the sandy slope to 
the nest. Holes in logs, old hats, nail boxes, 
all sorts of nooks and crevices about country 
houses are utilized for nesting places by the 
little builders. 

It has been remarked that the Carolina wren 
is not so provincial as his name would indicate. 
The manuals say he is rare north of forty de- 
grees north latitude ; but south of that, to my 
certain knowledge, he ranges at his own sweet 
will, and it is doubtful if he will always re- 
main within the boundary lines marked out 
for him by meddlesome naturalists. In my 
boyhood days he was one of our most familiar 
species in northeastern Ohio. Southwest of the 

16 



218 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

center of the State, where I now live, he is my 
constant comrade both summer and winter. On 
one of my jaunts, during a recent spring, along 
the Ohio River, below Cincinnati, no species 
was seen more frequently. 

But that is not all. My bird mania drove 
me in the spring of 1894 to the Gulf States — 
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. 
Having " stop-over " at Chattanooga, Tenn., I 
walked out, early one morning, toward the 
suburbs, and the first song I heard was that 
of Carolina, ringing like a bugle beneath the 
very shadow of Lookout Mountain, stirring 
memories of historic battles and valiant deeds. 
At many stations on my journey southward 
his rollicksome roundelays rang through the 
car window, and when I reached New Orleans 
not a jaunt was taken to the suburbs or the 
country where he was not heard piping at my 
elbow. On a fair November day I heard him 
singing lustily in the suburbs of Montgomery, 
Ala., and a few days later he was seen in the 
neighborhood of Pensacola, Fla., although here 
he was unaccountably shy and reticent. He 
really seemed to be ubiquitous. 

Yes, ubiquitous ; for, while some species se- 
lect suburbs and country homesteads for habi- 
tats, and others seek wild and sequestered places, 



THE CAROLINA WREN. 219 

Carolina makes himself equally at home almost 
everywhere. In Audubon Park, New Orleans, 
frequented by many loiterers and picnickers, 
he lives a jolly life, rolling his loud minstrelsy 
through the conservatory of plants and flowers 
until the echoes dance. He also loves the ceme- 
teries on the outskirts of the city, where his 
songs are anything but funereal. One day in 
April I found a wren's nest in one of the marble 
vaults. You are to remember that the dead in 
the Crescent City are not buried under ground, 
but are placed in vaults erected on the surface, 
making a cemetery look like a village of small 
marble cottages. Behind a cross of artificial 
flowers,, gleaming like silver in one of the 
vaults, the wren's nest was placed. The birds 
entered the recess through the interstices of an 
iron door. Had they not been so gay one might 
have thought their tastes rather sepulchral. 

But here is an odd characteristic of this 
species. While some individuals are sociable, 
seeking proximity to man, others seem disposed 
to make recluses of themselves. My rambles 
in the South took me to some very lonely, out- 
of-the-way places. No matter ; Carolina was at 
hand. I plunged into what seemed to be in- 
terminable forests, dark and dank, keeping a 
watchful eye on the sun, lest I should lose 



220 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

my bearings ; there was my little, ever-present 
friend. From far out in the inaccessible swamps 
— at least, I had not the courage to wade into 
them more than a rod or two — Carolina's lay 
came swinging merrily all day long. At Pass 
Christian, a famous summering and wintering 
place for that part of the South, Carolina mingled 
his song with the solemn swash of the waters of 
the Mexican Gulf ; and, with a little touch of 
fancy and sentiment, one might say that the 
sigh of the sea and the song of the bird made 
pleasant concord by very contrast. 

He is not a shy bird, even in his most se- 
questered haunts — that is, when he does not 
choose to be, for Carolina is somew r hat capri- 
cious — but he will come close to you, eye you 
inquiringly, utter his warning or complaining 
call, perhaps pass a joke about your tramplike 
appearance, and then go off about his business, 
expecting you to go about yours. In casting 
around for an apt sobriquet for this engaging 
bird, I have decided that he is deserving of the 
title of " High Priest of Everywhere." 



IF BIKDS COULD TALK. 

Now that spring has come, the birds are 
singing their sweetest carols, giving free opera 
festivals in grove and meadow, and many of 
them $,re building cozy nests in the grass and 
bushes. Of course, in pleasant weather the 
boys and girls can not stay indoors, or even in 
town, but will want to ramble out through the 
beckoning country. Perhaps they will find 
some birds' nests. 

What do you suppose the feathered owners 
would say if they could talk ? But they can 
talk, only we do not understand their dialect, 
for they chatter and chirp bird talk and not 
English. What do you think that song spar- 
row says as he flits about so uneasily ? We 
may readily imagine. 

" Don't rob my nest in the grass, please," 

•is what he means by his pitiful chirping. 

" Those eggs are my treasures, and I think as 

much of them as you do of your new marbles, 

and more, because they will become little spar- 

221 



222 NEWS FKOM THE BIRDS. 

row children by and by if you don't barm them. 
Would you like it if some bad boy were to 
break into your house and steal all your mar- 
bles and other toys ? No, you wouldn't ! Then 
think how I should feel if you should rob my 
nest of its pretty eggs. Remember the golden 
rule when you find a bird's nest." 

And so you say kindly : " Don't fret, little 
sparrow ; I won't even touch your pretty eggs. 
Good-by." 

Just listen to his song as you hurry away 
from the place. He seems to trill : u Go-od- 
by-y, my dear. You're the ki-ind of bo-oy I 
like. Come again and hear me sing when I'm 
not so busy." 

You walk on a little farther until you reach 
the meadow, where your ears are greeted with 
the tinMe-tinMe-te-tinMe of the bobolinks as 
they wheel in the air. But one of them stops 
his song, and begins to cry, " Chack ! chack ! " 
quite uneasily. 

Ah ! yes, there is a nest in the grass, cozily 
hidden and roofed over, and as the mother 
bobolink springs up, you see that there are half 
a dozen featherless baby birds in the dainty 
nursery. And now what do you think those 
parent birds are saying ? Let us translate their 
appeal into English : 



IF BIRDS COULD TALK. 223 

" You wouldn't be so cruel, so hard -hearted 
as to hurt or kill our pretty children, would 
you ? It would break our hearts. Birds, you 
must know, have hearts as well as people, and 
birds love their children, too. They wouldn't 
take such good care of 'em if they didn't. 
Now, how would your mamma and papa feel 
if some great giant, a hundred times as big 
and strong as they are, would come along and 
pick you up in his hands and carry you off ? 
Wouldn't they be heartbroken ? And you 
wouldn't like it, either — to be kidnaped in 
that way. So just put yourselves in our 
place, and we don't think you will ever hurt 
young birds." 

You hurry away without touching the open- 
mouthed brood in the grass, and as you stalk 
along, you notice a red-headed woodpecker 
scudding up a fence stake. See him hitch 
along his promenade until he reaches the top, 
where he perches and looks around in a wise 
way like a feathered sage, swinging his head 
back and forth like a pump handle, and calling, 
"Ktr-r ! ktr-r-r ! " And what is the sermon that 
this red-headed preacher delivers ? Listen ! 

" I'm glad you don't carry a slung shot, my 
lad. A slung shot is a bad thing for us birds. 
We like to live as well as you do, and we kill 



224 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 

a great many insects that would destroy the 
grain and fruit ; and what would you think if 
you couldn't have any more apples and peaches 
and berries for sauce ? But, then, a slung shot 
often only wounds a bird, breaking his wing or 
leg or bruising his body. There was my brother, 
poor fellow ! One day a bad boy broke his 
wing with a stone, so that he — my brother, not 
the bad boy — couldn't fly at all. He couldn't 
move from place to place except by hopping 
along on the ground, and so he couldn't get 
enough food to keep him alive. He grew 
weaker and weaker day by day. Oh, how he 
suffered ! It makes me cry to think of it. At 
last he couldn't move about at all any more, 
and he just starved to death by degrees. How 
would boys like to be served that way, eh? 
Suppose some strong man should throw a big 
rock against one of their legs and break it ! 
Well, don't you think a bird suffers pain just 
as folks do ? So, good-by. Never hurl stones 
at birds with a slung shot." 

After three such sermons from the feathered 
preachers, we are quite certain that you will 
never injure the birds or rob their nests. 

And now, young friends, I must do as my 
old grandfather was wont to do when he came 



IF BIRDS COULD TALK. 225 

from another State to visit us, his children and 
grandchildren. He would keep on talking 
gayly and pleasantly until the very moment of 
his departure had come, when he would sud- 
denly, and without a word of warning, spring 
to his feet, pass rapidly around the circle of 
astonished friends, grasp them by the hands, 
bid them an unspoken farewell, and then 
hurry away, wiping a tear from the corner of 
his eye. He never prolonged the sadness of 
his leave-taking. The dear old man's example 
is the one I shall follow, and bid you an ab- 
rupt but none the less loving adieu ; and while 
I say good-by without ceremony, I confess 
frankly I do so with genuine regret, as if part- 
ing from friends of long acquaintance. 



^ 



INDEX. 



Audubon, 100, 203. 

Bird lovers, 3. 
Bird manuals, 3-5. 
Bird study, 3. 
Bird trials, 50-58. 
Birds' meadow, 8-14. 
Blackbirds, English, 196. 
red-winged, 7, 8, 14, 48, 49, 

138, 141, 169. 
Bluebirds, 18^ 39, 44, 112, 164. 
Bobolinks, 9-14, 39, 66, 67, 85- 

88, 127, 141, 169, 222, 223. 
Bobwhite, 177, 199, 200, 202. 
Boys and birds, 162-171. 
Bunting, black-throated, 39. 

cow, 47, 48, 51. 
Burroughs, John, 55, 92. 

Catbirds, 39, 53-56, 126, 138, 

177, 179, 188, 190, 213. 
Chapman, Frank M., Handbook, 

5. 
Chat, yellow-breasted, 178, 180, 

185, 186, 188. 
Chickadee, black-capped, 15-17, 

22, 23, 27, 39, 50, 157, 

158. 
Coleridge, quoted, 9. 



Collectors, 58. 

Costa Rican birds, 166, 167. 

Coues's Key, 4. 

Creeper, brown, 19, 29, 34, 35. 

Cuckoo, 12, 13, 183. 

Curlews, 166. 

Dicaeum, 195. 
Doves, 33. 

Exercise, outdoor, 1-3. 

Flicker, 14, 15, 18, 40, 54, 126, 

148, 177. 
Flycatcher, 51. 
Foster, L. S., 4. 

Geese, wild, 168, 169. 
Gnat-catcher, 139, 183. 
Goldfinch, 33, 38, 89, 126. 
Grackles, boat-tailed, 171. 

purple, 6, 8, 76-78, 183. 
Grass finch, 95. 
Grebes, 196. 
Grossbeaks, 198. 

cardinal, 33, 167, 176, 177, 
183, 188, 208-213, 216. 

rose-breasted, 78, 187. 
Grouse, 201. 

227 



228 



NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 



Hawk, red-shouldered, 29-31. 

sparrow, 31. 
Hummingbird, 41, 42, 111, 195, 
198. 

Indigo bird, 33, 66, 71, 149, 178, 

188. 

Jay, blue, 50, 54, 55, 71, 72, 77, 
164. 
Canada, 170. 
Junco, 35, 36, 161. 

Kingfisher, belted, 39, 127-132, 

197. 
Texan, 132. 
Kinglet, golden-crowned, 19, 20, 

34. 

Lapwing, 196. 
Lark, horned, 23, 24. 

prairie horned, 65, 66. 
Lowell, 200. 

Magpie, 196, 197. 
Martin, fairy, 194. 
purple, 111, 177. 
sand, 197. 
Maryland yellowthroat, 66, 78, 

80, 183, 188. 
Meadow lark, 9, 18, 39, 46-49, 

67, 127, 133-138, 147, 148, 

166. 
Migration, 139-149, 164-171. 
Mocking bird, 149, 173-179, 185, 

190. 

Nests, 33, 37-49, 86, 87, 193-198, 
221-223. 

edible, 197. 



Night hawk, 111. 

Nightingale, 61. 

Night, flight in, 142, 143, 164, 

165, 168. 
Nuthatch, brown-headed, 171. 
white-breasted, 19, 27, 34, 39, 

78, 151-154, 160, 161. 

Opera glass, 3, 5. 
Oriole, Baltimore, 39, 71, 167, 
183, 191, 192. 

orchard, 39, 149, 183-185, 191. 
Ovenbird, 53, 193, 194. 
Owls, 56, 58. 

screech, 68-74. 

Parrakeet, Carolina, 100, 101. 

Parrots, 99-107. 

Pewee, wood, 176, 183. 

Phoebe, 43, 176. 

Pipit, Sprague's, 62-65. 

Polly, 103-107. 

Quail, Arizona, 206, 207. 
California, 206. 
common, 199-205. 
mountain, 205, 
scaled, 206. 

Rails, 196. 
Redstart, 147. 
Ridg way's Manual, 4. 
Robin, 6, 34,52, 53, 68-71, "b. 
126, 148, 167, 177. 

Sandpiper, 166. 

Sangster, Margaret, quoted, 40. 
Shrike, northern, 170. 
Skylark, European, 59-62, 63. 
Missouri, 64, 65. 



INDEX. 



229 



Snakes, 56, 57. 

Snowbirds, 19, 27, 28, 31, 35, 36, 

161. 
Sparrows, Bachman's, 181-183, 
188" 191. 
bash, 47, 48, 95, 178, 190. 
chipping, 95, 178, 180, 183, 

18(5, 188. 
English, 23, 91, 163, 170, 183, 

185. 
fox, 148. 

song, 9, 19, 20, 31, 59, 67, 75, 
76, 89-98, 126, 147, 148, 160, 
183, 190, 191,209,221,222. 
tree, 19, 27, 28, 31, 170. 
vesper, 39. 
white-throated, 215. 
Spruce hen, 170. 
Swallows, 39, 108-115. 
Swifts, 111. 

Tailor bird, 195, 196. 
Tanager, scarlet, 167. 

summer, 178, 186. 
Thrasher, brown, 9-12, 14, 37- 
39, 42, 44, 170, 177-179, 183, 
190. 
Thrush, hermit, 170. 
wood, 37, 39, 44, 51, 177-179, 
191. 
Titlark, 64, 65. 
Titmouse, black-capped, 157. 
tufted, 21, 22, 34, 155-158, 
170, 176. 



Tomtit, 34, 161. 

Torrey, Bradford, 41, 149, 211. 

Towhee, 39, 148, 206. 

Vireos, 121-126. 
Bell's, 122. 

blue-headed, 121, 126. 
red-eyed, 124, 183, 186, 188. 
warbling, 121-124, 183, 215. 
white-eyed, 124-126, 149, 180, 
181, 188. 

Warblers, black-throated blue, 
139. 

creeping, 147, 183, 188, 189. 

golden-winged, 81, 82. 

Kentucky, 210. 

myrtle, 144, 147, 149. 

prairie, 180. 

prothonotary, 82. 

summer, 9, 80, 81, 183, 188. 
Whippoorwill, 111. 
Winter companions, 18-28. 

exploits, 29-36. 
Woodpeckers, 21, 34, 39, 56, 58. 

downy, 159, 161. 

red-breasted, 24, 26, 34. 

red-cockaded, 171. 

red-headed, 78, 177, 223, 224. 
Wren, Carolina, 126, 175, 176, 
178, 185, 214-220. 

marsh, 83, 84, 116-120. 

Zebra bird, 25, 26, 33, 35, 140. 



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